Dear Michael,

I knew one day I’d be writing you this letter.  You walked into The Little Brown Jug in Ann Arbor one night followed by two mildly attractive girls and a few guys.  The first thing I thought was ‘He’s a little too normal.’  You had an un-superstar feel.  Worse, it seemed like you wanted to be normal.  And this was after your six Gold medals in Athens.

If you didn’t know already Mike–can I call you Mike?–you aren’t normal.  At least in the eyes of the rest of the world you aren’t.  Unfortunately, unlike the rest of us, when you do something potentially illegal–like smoke from a contraption normally used for smoking a substance called “marijuana”–it becomes a big story.

I know what you are thinking:  this shouldn’t be news; it’s not that big of a deal.  I’m right there with you.  In fact, when I first read the story I gave this angry reply to an e-mail thread from a certain scholarship house at Michigan:

• A) of course he has smoked weed before….according to one source 83.6% of students at Michigan have smoked weed (if you are saying to yourself “I haven’t”, then yes, you are in that 16.4%–even our president has, get with the program)

• B) Way to not quote any sources on the record and run an article…I mean really that’s the kind of thing I would do, and I am not legitimate (yet!)….are we sure this article is even true??? I mean it was written by someone going by “Georgina Dickinson.” Really? George in a, Dick in son? Really?

• C) a mid-twenty’s millionaire is getting drunk and doing drugs….Holy Shit stop the presses (if there are any left to stop); if the guy can do that and still win 8 gold medals good for him…that, is the American Dream

That was wrong of me.

I shouldn’t have made fun of Ms. Dickinson’s name, it was childish and rude–see we all make childish mistakes Mikey–can I call you Mikey?  It was probably not her fault that no one would go on the record.  She couldn’t make those students have the balls to step forward on the record, even if they were perfectly willing to throw you under the bus and trash your name.  Of course these were probably the same triple-collar-popped frat boys hanging from your ginormous monkey-balls during the party.

Also I just made up the number 83.6%. I don’t really know how many students at Michigan have smoked weed.  But I do know that it is the University where an event called “Hash Bash” takes place every year.  It’s also in Ann Arbor, a city that gives out only a $25 dollar fine on first offense of Possession of Marijuana charges, and it also legalized Medical Marijuana in 2004–four years before the entire state of Michigan.  So I shouldn’t have said, “get with the program,” I should have said, “It’s widely accepted in your general area.”

You see MP–can I call you MP?–we’ve all made mistakes.  But, unfortunately, we are normal.  You are not.  You win gold medals like we buy lottery tickets, eight at a time.  If this was Waterworld, you would be Kevin Costner and we would be…well we wouldn’t be.

I hope you know that you will now be the rag doll in the middle of a “legalize/demonize” tug-o-war.  Because people don’t pay attention to issues when a credible source such as Time Magazine reports that 42% of American’s surveyed have smoked weed (if the survey were representative of the whole country it would mean more than 127 million Americans have tried it). They don’t listen when the National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that 41.8% of 12^th graders in 2007 had tried marijuana once in their lifetime. People just see you Phelpsy–can I call you Phelpsy?–a world-famous celebrity doing something semi-controversial and we all freak out.   I’m not here to advocate that a mind-altering substance that cannot be tested easily (i.e.  after getting pulled over) should be legal or illegal; just know you will be asked ad nauseam what you think.  You might want to prepare a statement.

Is it fair?  No it’s not fair.  It’s not fair that your transgressions are splashed about as if they somehow matter to the rest of the world.  It’s not fair that as the economy falls apart your sophomoric antics are headline news.  It’s not fair that fathers are blaming you for having to explain to their kids what weed is–or worse giving you the backhanded complement: “Thanks, you helped me teach my kids a lesson”–when they really just hoped to avoid the question until their kid was out of the house.

Maybe it’s not fair, but it’s the price of your glory (you know that phrase ‘the grass is always greener…’? Yeah, think about that right now, pretty ironic).

You’ve learned from this, I think.  You’ve learned that as nondescript as you might look in blue jeans and a baseball cap, you won’t ever be an average kid again.

Oh, you can have fun, and you can even smoke weed sometime after this all dies down.  Just not with us.  You can’t be the cool guy at the party or a friend of Average Joe college student.

But don’t worry about the media, Phelpalotsky–can I call you Phelpalotsky?–this isn’t that big of a deal.  We are just making it into a major issue to set ourselves up for later stories.  You see now we have more ammo no matter what happens in the future.

If you move past this and win another 30 gold medals we can add this to your profile: “Michael struggled as a young man to accept his stardom and fell down the wrong path….” as we splash the pictures of you drunk and smoking out of an alleged weed bong “but he fought through it and overcame….” Or you let this overwhelm you and slip from glory, in which case we can have hundreds of documentaries on your fall and how hard you hit (pun intended).

Either way, from here on out your story is even better than a month ago.  So the hype is superficial; it’s the bridge between stories.

The great part, Michael, is that the choice of endings is all up to you.

Sincerely,

Kevin Patra

**********************************

Kevin Patra lives by the adage: Those who can’t do, teach, and those who can’t do or teach, write.  Currently, he is a graduate student at the University of Southern California studying Online Journalism, after spending four years at the University of Michigan obtaining a bachelors degree from the school of Language, Science & Fun.  Patra is currently working on a font that indicates when sarcasm and humor are being utilized in written works.

More from The Sports Union

• Letter of Encouragement to A-Rod | The Sports Union
• Letter of Encouragement to Ben Roethlisberger | The Sports Union
• Rising From the Ashes of Despair | The Sports Union
• Cooked by Ducks and Zebras | The Sports Union
• The Sports Union: For Sports Fans by Sports Fans! | Following The Leader: Awards To Honor MJ