A Warped POV by A. Dacosta Brathway

February 3rd, Tuesday/ Okay, now that the reality of having a Black president has set in, let's get back to reality. When are we, as a society, going to get off the deal of having a surrogate image raise our children? I am talking about this Michael Phelps person (character, caricature, whatever...). Olympic swimming champion? Right. Multiple gold metal winner? Right! Role model? Wrong! Don't get me wrong. What Michael Phelps has been able to accomplish is remarkable. It's damn near unbelievable! I'm thinking that it will be quite some time before we see another human being even come close to what he has done in a swimming pool./ That being said, he is also a drinker and a pot smoker. Now I raise the argument: Should he be allowed to just apologize for his transgressions and go on his merry way and be allowed to maintain his role model status in good standing, or should he be recognized for who he really is and afford the same scrutiny like everybody else? OR, should alcohal and canabus be reevaluated and reclassified as a necessity in the spirit of athletic achievement, therefore allowing the "average joe" to live his, or her, wildest dream of being super human in the pool, or on the court, or on the field? I mean, is apolgizing in an appropriate time frame (You know, like the five second rule when you drop food on the floor and be able to pick it up and eat it in five seconds) enough time for him to be able to repeat an offense out of the eye sight of a camera or video recorder to be posted on You Tube for the world to see? If image is driving sales of whatever product other than alcohal and weed, should he still be allowed to sell whatever product and rake in millions of dollars in the process while others his age be burned at the stake for the same offense?/ My bad! Maybe what I should be asking is could someone please explain what "double standard means?"

Excerpt from "My Life Sucked..." by A. Dacosta Brathway

Man, this whole drug thing is twisted. Young folks and some old folks) are killin' themselves with all kinds of weird drug concoctions and that puzzles all the hell out of me! Back in the day, I got into the drug thing. At first I started drinking beer. I lived over my aunt's store so I could go downstairs and sneak a bottle of malt liquor out of the fridge and have at it. It was cool, at first, but then I started getting drunk! That was some weird shit. I was dizzy and throwing up... I remember the room spinning around and no matter what I did to try to stop it, it kept spinning around and around and around...I got bored with that shit real fast. The only other way I was willing to get high was to smoke weed./ Now, out at the high school, thw white boys was doing all kinds of shit. It was the '60's and the hippie thing was in full effect. There was LSD that had cats straight trippin'... I was having no part of that. There was other things happening that did not interest me... But that weed... Oh man! I loved smokin' weed! The first time I did it at the high school, I was told, I pulled my pants off and ran the length of the football field, buck naked! I have no recollection of that but that's what I was told. However, I do remember craving potatoe chips and "Hostess Twinkies" and "Ring Dings" and "Devil Dogs" and lots and lots of soda! Back then a soda cost $.15 and any one of those cakes cost a dime. Potatoe chips cost 5 cents a bag. A bag of weed cost $5.00 and a lid was going for $20.00. Because I played ball, I knew all the dealers so scoring a bag for a discount was not a problem and my game was not even that tight. When I hung out with the "real" ballers the smoke was even better!/ I have to say that when I started smoking weed, I stopped giving a shit about school. I was too high to care. But, I did like the feeling. I guess when you are young, you don't want to care about anything. You just want to do what you want to do. I didn't have a whole lot to do so all I wanted to do was smoke. I think I started smoking weed because I was getting dumped on by chicks. When I was high, I didn't give a shit about chicks. I didn't even know when they were dumping on me after hitting a joint. I didn't care! What was cool about it was I liked being in an altered mental state. I had weird ideas when I got high. To hell if what I thought did not make sense to others. It only had to make sense to me! Obviously, I had to stop but, in my mind, I was real creative when I was altered. I thought differently about myself. I felt confident that whatever I did, I was cool with it. I wanted to be an artist and a musician. I couldn't play an instrument to save my life and the only thing I could paint was pictures by the numbers. It was like I was smoking confidence. When I came down, I felt like I couldn't do shit./ I eventually stopped getting high in college. The feeling got lost in translation. It was that and me getting thrown out of college after I got caught smoking a joint, in my room, during a surprise inspection during homecoming weekend when it seemed appropriate to smoke a joint in the first place!