My swimming experience

Today, when I went out with my friends, we talked about our interests. Most of them like swimming and know it well, except me. :-p While talking about their swimming skills, I remembered mine. That's pretty funny, I think. :-)
Swimming is very easy for everyone who knows how to swim, but it's not that easy for me. Actually, I wasn't aware that swimming is a so useful skill until I fell into a river. Because of this horrible experience, I decided to learn swimming. I started from the basic skills, such as holding on breath in the water, kicking legs, grabbing the water and changing breath. But after a long time practicing, I was still afraid of swimming without a swimming board around me. I only could do it with a swimming board because I was scared of water. In addition, I found that probably I was doing a wrong way. While I was kicking, I felt confused. Basically, people went forward while they were kicking. But while I was acting an opposite motion, backward rather than forward. That was weird. I tried many times, but I still moved backward. So I asked the lifeguard for help. After watching my motions, she felt it was funny too. After watching my second motion, she found my problem and told me the correct way. Then I tried and indeed moved forward. Gradually, after a lot of practice, I could swim without a swimming board. Although I am not familiar with it, I'm not scared of water any more. I know that I need more practice in the future, if I want to be familiar with it.:-)