Six-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps would like to lead the life of a normal 19-year-old. Scott Gries/Getty Images

By now Michael Phelps knows that his life truly is different, forever. It is a lesson learned painfully. But stop for a moment and come back with me to a summer afternoon at a public high school swimming pool outside Colorado Springs.

This is two months before the Olympic Games and Phelps is spending the day shooting a commercial for the wireless company that pays for the right to use his image to market cell phones. In the swimming world, Phelps is already famous. He is getting there in the mainstream, because NBC is showing his face at every possible moment to prepare American for the Games. But he's not really big. Not yet. That will wait for Athens.

On this day, he fills the long gaps between takes by playing table tennis with his training partners -- none of whom will make the Olympic team and none of whom have seven-figure marketing deals -- and munching on the ever-changing food spread that sits next to the pool. When the catering truck arrives for dinner, Phelps grabs a double burger and a salad and plucks NBA scores off his Blackberry.

It had become common, around this time, for journalistic interlopers in Phelps' 19-year-old life to comment on how "ordinary" he is. Just a teenager. Like any teenager. Albeit with long arms and an ugodly ability to carry oxygen. True enough, when he was back home in Baltimore, he loved to hang with a small group of friends who all grew up together and never let Phelps hang attitude on them. They liked to play poker together and go to Circuit City to buy gadgets.

And with his snaggly teeth and floppy ears, Phelps begs to be called a kid. When I had first met him, sixth months earlier in a child care lounge at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club, Phelps sat across from me with a wool cap pulled down low and sleepily tried to answer questions. We started talking about video games. My then-12-year-old son had prepped me.

"Ask him about Halo," he said. Phelps would know about Halo, my son assured me.

So I mentioned Halo. Phelps sat up in the chair and his eyes got wide and alert. "That game is sick," Phelps said. And then he was excited to engage me for the next 20 minutes. I thanked my son for the bait.

Back to June in Colorado Springs. I am sitting with Phelps's coach, Bob Bowman. "A lot of people like to say Michael is just a normal teenager," he says. "Well, I would argue that there's nothing normal about Michael as an athlete or a teenager."

I would agree. As an athlete, Phelps is a freak of nature. As a person, he is a celebrity, made thus by the Olympic starmaking machinery. It's possible Phelps didn't really understand all of this until the aftermath of his DUI arrest on Nov. 4 in Salisbury, Maryland. It's probable that he does, now, because it was a huge mistake.

Something about Phelps: He would like to be normal. (Not entirely normal, after all, he did seek out a cell phone number for one of the Bush daughters). But he would like to hang with his buddies and go to keg parties in Salisbury. (Yes, I realize he's under the legal drinking age of 21, but on college campuses, that age is a joke). He would like to go buy electronic toys and games without being bothered.

But he can't. Check that. He can't, and remain an icon at the same time. He can't just hang with a large group of drinking college students and assume that nobody will test him, that nobody will try to draw him into a confrontation (which reportedly happened in Salisbury before the DUI stop). He can't assume that he'll just be left alone. And obviously, he can't ever get behind the wheel of a car after drinking because a) it's foolish and dangerous and nobody should and b) the repercussions for him doing so, and getting caught, will be severe.

There was always something vaguely creepy about the buildup to Phelps' Olympics, as if his destiny was already penned and he needed only swim some races to fulfill it. Which he did. The celebrity suit was already knit, and America waited for Phelps to simply put it on. Corporations invested their money -- nearly $10 million dollars over the next five years, according to Phelps's agent -- to use Phelps's name. Yet it's not that easy.

By now the choices should be clear to Phelps. Bowman said all along that Phelps would be best off swimming little this year, all the better to recover from an exhausting two-year buildup to Athens. He missed a big meet with a sore back, ominously reminiscent of his sister, Whitney, whose career was ended by a back injury that still bothers her.

In the near future, Phelps will choose who he wants to be. He can be the normal young guy, partying (safely, next time) and playing and growing up at his own pace. Companies will eventually desert him, because he won't be a pristine role model anymore. His swimming will probably not suffer, because he is young, gifted and resilient. Or he can protect his image and live a grownup life of looking over his shoulder and protecting his reputation at every turn. It's not necessarily a fully realized and joyful life, this one. Sponsors will flock to him and renew their contracts, but he will live in a cocoon of sorts. In pursuit of this perfection, he can't afford strike two.

It's not such an easy choice, but one thing is clear: Bowman was right. Phelps is not normal.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden weighs in with a Viewpoint every Friday on SI.com.