It Takes a Lot More Than That To Kill A Bull Moose!

It is a fight. For the past week, food goes down and it comes up again, violently, knocking me to the bathroom floor like a boxer slumped in the corner, bucket by his side, panting. All night, off and on. It only stops when I don't eat.

The trainer slaps my face. The bell rings again. Round Two. Out again, into the fight. I didn't ask for this fight, but here I am, and I intend to win -- or at least go the distance and face my judgment.

And when my shuffling feet slow, I think about a story of Teddy Roosevelt. Before a speech to a packed hall, he was shot by an assassin in the audience. The bullet went through his folded remarks in his breast pocket, grazed his metal glasses case and entered his chest. He sat down for a moment, urged to quit the stage and seek medical treatment. Then he stood, blood on his shirt, a bullet inside him, unfolded his remarks, with two bullet holes through the sheets, and started his speech to the stunned audience with the comment: It takes more than that to kill a bull moose!

Roosevelt shouldn't have been standing there at all. He was a sickly child, told by his father when he was 11 that he had a strong mind but a weak body. His father said, "You have to make your body." The young TR said: I will make my body. And he did. He engaged in the strenuous life. As an undergraduate at Harvard, a doctor told Roosevelt that he had a weak heart and unless he lived a very quiet life, he would only have a couple years to live. He lived to be 60 and rode with the Rough Riders, served as president, spent a year hunting in Africa, launched one of the most successful third party bids for the

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White House, and discovered an unexplored river in South America. Quiet life indeed! His experience shows that it is truly possible to "make your body" with determination and will.

Up off the floor, out of the corner, back into the fight. It takes a lot more than that to kill a bull moose!