I was always full of energy when I was younger. I would play with my friends down the street from my house all day during the summer. We went to summer camp one year at the beach and all wanted to go in the water. The camp instructors wouldn’t let us because we had just finished eating and told us we need to wait thirty minutes to digest our food. After thirty minutes they finally let us in the water.

Informant: The informant for this piece of folklore is my brother Bradley Comisar. He heard this when he was about 14 years old at the Santa Monica beach. He went to a camp with a bunch of his friends at the beach.

Analysis: To this day I am not sure if this is true or not. Could eating really effect your body’s capability to swim in the ocean? I have heard stories of people getting stomach cramps in the ocean when they go swimming right after eating. I have also heard several different versions of this with different increments of time varying from fifteen minutes to forty five minutes.