The Hunt
We think we leave footprints behind, but in fact they follow us.

Tracks in snow melt, prints in dirt and sand wash over, and steps on pavement leave no impression except on the souls who made them.

Miles we run grow brainward from our feet - through our hearts and lungs, pumping blood and oxygen, flushing thoughts out - which means they accumulate even more.

Say you dreamed once of hunting tigers. Never mind that you lived in Michigan, where the only such beasts were in zoos or on Detroit ball diamonds, the latter species too often toothless.

The grander and more improbable your dreams, the greater your journey. You'd track that tiger - in the process collecting trophies in school, your career, with pursuits and pastimes - and discover its path was circular.

The prints of your prey, and praise, led you to yourself.

*****

Tigger sat at the top of the stairs, eyes teary, her costume gamy. My daughter, Flannery, 4, didn't want Halloween to end, had kept her stripes on for subsequent trips to the zoo and church. But today she was pouting for reasons too simple to explain, yet profound for daddy to understand.

The only cure was to get her laughing, employing materials on the staircase - my wife's pink dumbbell and a bunny-shaped orange bowling pin - as weapons.

I pretended that I, being pink, was a dumbbell (requiring no stretch of imagination) who ate the pin, making me sprout bunny ears, so I had to hop much as Tigger bounces. Soon my daughter and I were dancing.

We went to bed happy. That night I woke up, wandered downstairs, stepped on the dumbbell and fell like a bowling pin. I saw highlights of my life flash by in an instant, which still left plenty of time to ...

THUNK!

You can't write for newspapers 30 years and not know what lame is. The landing hurt. I laid there wondering if I could walk again, much less run, whether every step had led to this instant, if laughter counts as a cure or weapon, and thank God for Second Amendment rights. MR