Swimming for a Cause

On the Today Show this morning the conversation was not about Michael Phelps: The Swimmer but Michael Phelps: The Millionaire. The claim is that with the money he is/will make he will never have to work again. Well, MC Hammer and Mike Tyson probably thought at one point the money would last forever – though Phelps isn’t living such extravagant standards. No pet tigers.

I’m so fiscally responsible that if I won the lottery I’d never run out of money and so would never need to work again…but I’d want to. It’s the boredom, you see.

They talked of Phelps starting a foundation as those with too much money often do. One person interviewed said he will probably want to spread the gospel of swimming: promote a sport that has done so much for him. “The Michael Phelps Center for Kids Who Can’t Swim Good…Yet”. Poetic irony would be a protégé of Phelps breaking his record one day – Phelps knowing the record would still be standing if he never while the former PhelpsPhan stares him down with a defiant rebelliousness: “now the student has become the teacher… “ What I do agree with is their claim that Phelps is probably inspiring a new generation of swimmers.

At least in the short-term.

I’ve certainly been planning to cross-train in the pool, and watching his races makes me think what good exercise it would be; it’s pushing me to get in there quicker. But I’m easily malleable like that. Watching gymnastics in the 1990s, I would run around my house doing summersaults. Yet, when I feel that cold water my interest in swimming will experience shrinkage – and the youngins’ watching the games now have Wii, so how long will it last? I thought I might want to go into politics after staying home sick one day watching the movie “Dave” on TV. It took a year of Advanced Placement Comparative Politics and half-semester of undergraduate political science to make me realize what a dry boring topic it was, just invented for phonies to fill their egos. But I digress. If Phelps inspires many, and only a few stick with swimming, then at least some will have found a calling, and that’s a beneficial multiplier effect we cannot deny.