Sometimes, it was good to do things slow.

Being a speedster was impossible to describe. You could draw as many parallels and comparisons as you want, but no one except a fellow conduit of the Speed Force could ever know what it was like to watch the world blur past you at impossible speeds, to feel that power coursing through your veins, to have every cell in your body vibrate with such energy that you could pass through solid objects, or become invisible to the naked eye. No one could imagine that, not really - not correctly - and anyone who thought they did was mistaken, grossly underestimating the wonders that Jay Garrick and his peers found themselves capable of.

The problem came when such speed, such wonder, such incredible power, became normal. It wasn't an addiction, it was more insidious than that. It was like sloth, a deadly sin that you lapsed into. If every task, every chore, every mundane facet of existence could be completed within the blink of an eye, why would you ever do anything different? Why would you walk if you could drive? Why would you drive if you could fly? Why would you fly if you could race there, over land and sea as if they were no different, up mountains and buildings, down valleys and highways, faster than human perception, faster than light, experiencing that buzz and wonderment all along the way? If you were a speedster, why would you ever move slowly again?

There was an answer, of course. Such questions always had an answer. For Jay Garrick, she was half-asleep in the other room, the intended recipient for the breakfast that Jay was slowly constructing, relishing each mortally-paced step and process. There was joy to be found in such tasks, to cook or craft or construct with your own hands, to feel a connection to what you were doing and what you had made. The whole world had become speedsters in a way, modern society built on instant food and instant gratification, on services and software and surrogates who could take care of every inconvenience for them. People didn't go to stores anymore, they browsed the internet and had everything delivered. People didn't fix their broken sinks or change their own spark plugs anymore, there were contractors and mechanics for that. Torn clothes? Worn shoes? A broken computer, or phone? People didn't even bother trying to repair those anymore, they just trashed the old and broken, and splashed out on a replacement.

Maybe Jay was just old. That was something he wrestled with, more and more as the days and weeks passed him by. The power that the Speed Force imbued him with kept him physically young - or at least, physically younger than he should have been - and on most days, that felt like a blessing. But the Speed Force defined what he could do, not who he was: and in that regard, Jay Garrick was slow and unchanging, a Baby Boomer amid the rise of the Millennials. The more things changed, and the more Jay struggled to adapt to them, the more obsolete he began to feel: the more he became those worn out old shoes, just waiting for that moment when the wear and tear was too severe, and he was thrown away instead of anyone having the patience to attempt a repair.

And so Jason made the most of it while he could. He made the most of life, and the little tasks and chores that made it what it was. He made the most of fatherhood, a challenge that already progressed at an alarmingly fast pace even without the Speed Force's help. He cooked by hand. He fixed his own sink. The cabinets affixed to the kitchen wall above him had been crafted, and assembled, and installed by his own hands - with a little help from the smaller hands of his daughter, of course, especially with the hinges and in the hard-to-reach corners. When his work demanded it, he took the time to stand at a tailor's, indulging in patience and in nostalgia for proper craftsmanship.

Jay never quite figured out shoes, though. No amount of indulgence, or nostalgia, or advanced space-age meta-materials could withstand the stress of being worn on the feet of a speedster. Perhaps that was the analogy to dwell on in all of this, perhaps that was the inevitability: that one day, Jay would go from being an old and comfortable pair of shoes to a pair too worn and broken to be of any use.

Hopefully not today.

Jay grabbed the nearby saucepan, the wooden spoon clanging inside like a rudimentary bell. "Sleep when you're dead!" he yelled, the raucous sound filling up the entirety of their home. "Grub's up, kiddo!"