It takes all kinds to be sedentary in the White House, the bathtub

Presidents Day is here, so it's a good time to set the record straight about a few of our nation's chief executives.

George Washington is often considered our first president; others place him at No. 8 -- go look it up -- but for our purposes, we'll cut him some slack. It gains us nothing in 2009 to reignite the old George Washington-John Hanson bar fight.

Washington myths abound. Oddly enough, he was not born in Washington -- D.C. or state -- but in Virginia. He did not, as three out of four dentists believe, have wooden teeth. (He did, however, wear primitive contact lenses, which he always removed when sitting for portraits because they made him squint.)

Neither did George chop down a cherry tree just so he could brag to his father. The fact is, they were not on speaking terms because Mr. Washington had never told the lad that if he tried really hard, he could grow up someday to be president.

At the time, Virginia was under the rule of the king of England, but Father Washington never told George he could grow up to be king, either. With such a strained relationship, it's a wonder George ever amounted to anything at all, which, if you believe the Hanson camp, might be the truth.

Our next president was not Sam Adams, who was a fiery patriot and later a beer, but John Adams, who, by comparison, isn't really worth mentioning here.

I should add that Adams later sneaked into office again by adding a middle name and pretending to be his own son, John Quincy Adams. The ruse worked, except at family reunions, where he would stand in a corner and talk to himself.

Next came a couple of politicians who won office only because their names rhymed with "Washington": Jefferson and Madison. That chicanery later was used by Jackson, the Johnsons (Andrew and Andrew Quincy), Nixon and even Lincoln.

Lincoln! What a sad story he was. Born in the log cabin that he had built with his own hands by firelight, he was the only kid in the fifth grade to stand 6 feet tall and have a beard. Still, except for starting a war and loving the theater, he wasn't so bad.

Our nation also was led by a Tyler and a Taylor, though only their mothers could tell them apart. Note: Tyler was one of three presidents to serve during 1841; the others were Martin Van Buren and William Henry Harrison, the latter of whom had a habit of dying in office.

We didn't have a woman as president until No. 13: Mildred Fillmore. Her accomplishments have been lost to history, though, and today she doesn't really get the attention she deserves.

Grover Cleveland was a large fellow, which he tried to explain by telling people he was actually our 22nd and 24th presidents put together. If you were to examine his ID card, though, you would have seen that No. 24 was actually Grover Quincy Cleveland, and that he was an organ donor.

Our most recent ex-president was George W. Bush. According to his father, George H.W. Bush, the "W" stands for Quincy.

MOORE WORDS: "President" comes from the Latin sedere , meaning "to sit." Adding the prefix "pre-" makes it mean "to sit before, or to sit in front of." A president presides.

By the way, sedere also resulted in "sedentary," which refers to people who sit around. That reminds me of our 27th president, William Howard Taft, who was so rotund that, as the story goes, he once got stuck in his bathtub.

Happy Presidents Day!

Reach Glynn Moore at (706) 823-3419 or glynn.moore@augustachronicle.com.