This past week the world let out a collective gasp as Michael Phelps got caught smoking pot. I yawned and wondered how that bong held up under the lung capacity of an Olympic caliber athlete. And where was the lovely Mrs. Phelps during this wave of media attention? It would have been perfect timing to showcase the Chico’s Spring collection.
Please forgive me as I am not condoning or making fun of drug use here. (Just say No kids.) But how anyone could be shocked at these Phelps developments is beyond me. Like everyone else, I rooted for him and celebrated his unprecedented victories in Beijing this past summer. But all the while in the back of my mind, I’m thinking that this guy is a bit of a freak – and a man made one at that.
Phelps has excelled at swimming at the expense of maturity. This man has no childhood, no opportunities to make mistakes, and no choices. If you were never given choices, how can society expect you to choose correctly?
The other day I was talking to the brothers about why Dave and I let them eat junk food (cookies, candy, etc). I explained that it is important that they are allowed to make choices between two options. If they are never exposed to the lesser choice, they would probably be more likely to want it. Note: We are not going to expose them to illegal bad options ever. But Phelps has been raised without any choices and now at the age of 23, he has lots of them, and apparently is going a little hog wild, not unlike a normal teenager would do.
Team Phelps created a super athlete, but also an incomplete human being. And now the Olympic Committee has temporarily banned the automaton they had a heavy hand in making.
Phelps deserves a break, not for the Olympic champion that he is, but for the grown-up that he isn’t.
