Ah Teddy. Blue blood, president, and one of the four gents who looks majestically down at us from Mount Rushmore. A man of limitless energy, a writer, a reader, and a charger of the San Juan Hill. Is there anything he could not do?

Well, maybe. It seems that he could not spend a Saturday afternoon on the sofa watching Netflix with his wife or watching football—even though he did lead the effort to bring some structure to what was then a very dangerous college game.

Now I know that I am treading on some pretty thin ice with slotting good old Teddy into the Seriously? column. You are wondering if I am soon to set my critical sites upon George Washington, motherhood, or apple pie—after all, who embodies the best of the American ideals if not the ever-energetic Theodore Roosevelt Jr?

Well, don’t worry. George, motherhood, and apple pie are all safe—at least from me. And it is not as if I am trying to knock Roosevelt down from the pedestal that he so richly deserves to be mounted upon, but rather that I, and many others in the Just Average movement, are simply swamped by the man and all that he did. Just when you think you have taken the full width and breadth of him, you discover that there is something else that he seems to have mastered. After a while, you start to wonder if our leg has been pulled all these years—for we of average stock are happy just to get through a week at work while keeping the home fires burning.

Harvard grad (Phi Betta Kappa of course), author of a serious Naval warfare history at the age of 24, Governor of New York, leader in the State Assembly, New York City police commissioner, Rough Rider, outdoorsman, and of course the youngest person to ascend to the Presidency of the United States.

Ebullient, energetic, manly, rigorous, robust, he studied ornithology and biology, He read with a passion exhibited by few men before or since. He boxed and he rowed and was into physical fitness long before it became part of our daily lives.

He was a Square Deal man. A trust buster and a food and drug safety advocate. He marked off the lands that are now our glorious national park system. He started the Panama Canal, launched the Navy’s Great White Fleet, expanded U.S. foreign policy, and to top it off won the 1908 Nobel Peace Prize for brokering the end of hostilities in the Russo-Japanese war… and it does not stop there.

Ok, look. These are all wonderful and great things and together they merit his spot on Mount Rushmore, but here is what I did on this cold December day up here in the Northeast: I woke up unusually early for some reason—just a minute or so before 11 a.m. I puttered around then went to the diner uptown for some French toast and sausages. I chatted with those sitting at the counter with me and then went back home to read the mail and take a nap.

Spent time on the phone, read a bit and then puttered around some more with paperwork that I needed to catch up on. Took a long walk and then followed some enjoyable rabbit trails about history on Wikipedia. Answered some emails and puttered around some more in case there was anything I had not puttered with before. Since it is now already 8:30 in the evening, I figure that I will try to watch that Hitchcock movie that I have never seen: Foreign Correspondent. Afterward, I might work on this essay some more but I am sure that I will soon hear that call from my loyal and never-failing friend the bed. It will soon announce, as it always does, that it is there should I need some more slumber time.

I would not know what to do with all the accomplishments of Roosevelt nor how to be so “on” all the time. Should, on a rare chance, I ever edge toward envy of what he did, I would take comfort that I play a vital role in how this evens out in the world—that as an average gent I just sit on the opposite side of the scale in life and prevent it from tipping too far in one direction.

Alas, Theodore Roosevelt died far too young at 60. His body was wracked by the malaria that he had contracted in Cuba and when he fell ill again on an expedition to South America it probably did, as he predicted, take ten years off his life. A double shame for it happened to one who worked so hard at being of rude and robust health.

It would be strictly against the code of conduct of the Just Average movement to begrudge him all that he mastered in his time. He was a man for the ages and left a strong legacy.

Don’t take this the wrong way then when I ask if his ideal of a constant and strenuous flavor of masculinity coupled with what must have at times seemed like an act might have made him a little hard to be around 24/7. We average folk run on a slightly slower clock and I honestly wonder how long I could have kept pace. It seems as if it would have been exhausting.

I put him in the “Seriously?” section as he seemed to be just too high energy for me and too hard to believe how he packed it all in. Yet I salute him and glad that I can admire him from afar—exactly from that place where I admire a good deal of those worthy of admiration—from the sofa!