First time for everything

I can clearly remember the time I faced a near death experience, I am sure that everyone would if they had one themselves. It was a during a spring vacation, I believe that I was 9 or 10 during the time. I didn't know how to swim and I have never learned how. However my parents and family friends decides to go to the hotel's pool to swim and play. It was a pretty nice looking pool, with long smooth wooden beach chairs on the side. I could clearly remember the faint smell of chlorine slowly raising out of the pool. The floor was slippery like the surface of a new slide. The whole room was bright and white, white other than the blue pool floored with colorful mosaic. I remember the older kids jumping into the water like it was nothing, as if the pool was 4 feet deep. I wanted to try too, but my mom pulled me back. I looked at her and took two flotation devices of the chair and fitted one on each of my arms. She then gently turned me around and allowed me to enter the pool. The moment I jumped in I felt a rush of cold water cover my body from head to toe. It was like being covered by snow with a thin layer of clothing on. I screamed. The air escaped my lungs and the flotation devices slipped off of my arms like butter. I was drowning. I tried to yell for help but I only felt a rush sharp cold water coming into my mouth and down my throat. The next think I could remember was a lasso on a stick plunging through the surface of the water and towards my body. I couldn't move even though I thought it was there to attack me. The lasso wrapped under one of my arms and on one side of my neck. I felt a tug and my body was being lifted to the surface of the pool. I open my eyes to feel a sharp stinging feeling like getting sand in your eyes, then my throat burned and I began to spit water out. The smell of chlorine filled my nose ten times stronger then when I just walked into the pool. My parents looked at me with a worried expressions on their faces. After this I took up swimming lessons and ended up liking to swim and even competed in swimming competitions. It took such a dramatic experience to help me build courage afterwards.