Phelps + Bong = Adulthood

I’m still pondering Michael Phelps and the bong. Seems to me there’s a Major Moment going on here.

Think about it: Yeah, so Phelps got stoned. But hey, we’ve got a president who not only smoked; he, gasp, inhaled. (No pun intended.) And, bigger gasp, he admits it.

That’s important. Not that Obama or Phelps smoked pot. Coulda been they chugged some beers or slugged down some vodka.

The point is: young humans learn by doing (aka trial-and-error), and they often make mistakes. That’s what we do, whether we’re future presidents or athlete superstars. We screw up. We fuck up. We smoke pot and drive like idiots and snub the wierder kids and all kinds of other stuff.

That’s what we do en route to adulthood. It’s crazy to ask Michael Phelps to suddenly become A Perfect Adult without allowing him to make the stupid mistakes that eventually produce a sane, sensible, rational adult.

This falls into the same category as making kids wear helmets while they’re cycling along a bike path that’s no where near a street, or wearing fifteen body pads while they rollerskate, or padding every single surface in your house so infants won’t “get hurt” while they learn to walk.

Because that’s what we humans do: we “get hurt.” We experience life. We grow, we change, we learn. And eventually we become adults.

We become, in other words, older but wiser by fucking up en route to wisdom. So Phelps + bong = [wise] adulthood.