If speed kills, I will live forever. Runners so fat they have no laps lap me. I'm mistaken for statues; statutes of limitation expire before I finish. I'm so run down even laws of gravity can't catch up.

My racing flats have gone flat; there is no more air in them. Nor in me, except when I err thinking light shoes will shoo me to run at light speed.

What was that that flew by? A glacier? What's the rush, Frosty? Where's the fire?

I had the fire in my belly once. Now my gut's crammed with ice cream, I want to fire it. Hire Donald Trump to dismiss my mind, which is mined out too.

Things can't get any worse? Of course they can. Think positive. I was doing so the other day when I went to the bathroom and got entangled in dental floss.

Our minds are their own snares, but sometimes four-year-old daughters help. I am stringing along with Flannery by encouraging her to get off my assets and start up her own career.

Mollycoddling parents may gaze askance at me for the regimen I've set up - pre-dawn calisthenics, eight-mile runs ramping up to 20 miles when she's ready, elocution lessons, studies in Latin-verb conjugations, Little Miss pageants, all the while working full-time after school - but someday she'll thank me.

Flannery showed early genius (not surprising, given her gene pool) for creating toothpaste sculptures squeezed out of tubes. "Bathroom Sink/Mixed Media/Colgate-Crest" is pliable and dynamic, accepting finger impressions and ambient debris, such as toenail clippings. It will be a short step from the loo to the Louvre, once the art world catches on. I am starting her on entry-level work as a dental hygienist, until then.

She'll be sure to rise, given my encouragement, from mere mouth Nazi to Fuehrer of all things oral: speech (by which humanity transmits culture), food and drink (needed to survive) ... a gatekeeper's role sure to pay off big for her Dad someday.

Little did I know she would use my investment in tools intended for her development, to string floss from the bathroom doorknob to the base of a stand stacked with books about "How to Lead and Succeed by Following These Directions."

I became ensnared in her unwaxed, mint-flavored, loo-wide web, tripped and banged my knee (which is making me slower yet). This tipped over the stand and spilled self-improvement books bouncing, one by one, off my head.

The one thing I'm doing quickly is getting slower.

There is solace in that, at least. MR