Nothing wrong with Phelps' 'nap'

Kids, the real lesson is pot's not going to hurt you. (Lemme back up: This column is a tribute to Jim Moore, Norman Chad and every other offensive sports columnist who might be out of a job soon with papers closing, because poking fun at the sensitive should never go out of business. Secondly, I don't like Spokane. Keep reading.)

Anyone who wasn't home-schooled has long known pot's no biggie, but the lesson I wish we could take from the picture of the record setting Olympian Michael Phelps inhaling marijuana is that maybe D.A.R.E. never had it right in the first place.

Phelps achieved his goals, smoked to celebrate, and so the world turns.

You'd think.

I KNOW American parents don't want to hear this, and they cover their ears and shut their eyes to block it out, but let me try to drag America out of the dark ages on this one: Pot is harmless. It just makes you want to take a nap.

When you want to take that nap, children, is the only lesson that could be important here.

The secret of life is finding a vocation or craft to which you can devote your everything, the successful eager to wake each morning in its pursuit. Like, say, waking up at 4:30 every morning your whole life to swim laps while in the hopes of becoming an Olympian while the rest of the world sleeps. That said, pursuit leads to accomplishment, which leads to accolades, which leads to 'It's OK to take a nap now.'

If you want to skip pursuit, accomplishment and accolades and head straight for the pillow, then drugs aren't your problem - real life is.

Don't worry, though, we'll still order coffee from you, and I'm sure someone will read your blog post.

NOW THE wife's leaned over, caught a gist of this gem, and the pure and holy are up in arms.

Ninety-seven percent of research indicates marijuana is a gateway drug, they scream, shaking their clenched fists.

That means abusers graduate to harsher forms of substances, and we parents have to stand by and watch our children's lives flush down the drain.

Blah.

Ninety-nine percent of the graduate students conducting those studies were at frat parties just like that South Carolina one six years ago. These are the same guys at 35 whose wives eye them from across the barbecue as they sip one beer with the "my-god-how-I-wish-I-could-relive-the-good-old-days" look on their faces.

They turned out fine, and so did the South Carolina deputies who were the ones throwing keg parties back in high school but now want to crack down on Phelps because he broke the law in their neck of the woods.

That's funny, except not the good kind of funny but rather the sad, embarrassing kind of funny, like when you happen to overhear the next table hitting on the cocktail waitress or catch a grown man pulling the tomato off his hamburger.

(Lemme guess, witty blogger: You're quick enough to minimize the Web page at work before your boss comes around. Impressive. We absolutely should take your opinions seriously.)

STILL, SOME insist that Phelps is a disgrace to the Olympic Games, America and himself.

But to anyone living in the real world, he isn't. He's a face behind a few passing moments in our own lives.

We watched his training and devotion pay off in Beijing, cheered, then turned off the television and went back to the real world - the world where grown-ups chase their own vocations, realize waitresses make their money on being friendly, don't blog, and aren't appalled at the thought of a vegetable on their burger.

Now someone get Mike Patrick to write another Spokane editorial, pronto!

Tom Hasslinger is a reporter at The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2010, or by e-mail at thasslinger@cdapress.com.