i'm six five, two-twenty, and there's two of me.

Little Phelps Things I Love → his story

Something a lot of people don’t know about Michael is that he was bullied terribly in school. Michael was tall and thin, with long arms and a body he most definitely had not grown into yet. He was also considered “weird” because swimming was the sport he pursued, instead of football or basketball. Michael’s biggest issues though were his large ears, his ADHD, and his lisp. Michael’s mother Debbie said once that Michael would go to school wearing hats to cover his ears and the jocks would steal them off his head and laugh at him. He struggled in school because of the inability to focus (due to his ADHD) and couldn’t seem to do anything right. More than once, the bullying escalated from verbal to physical. But Michael found refuge in the pool. He worked tirelessly at his dreams, never giving up, no matter what people told him. Now more than ten years later, Michael is one of the most cherished athletes of all time. I wonder how the bullies feel about that.