Achilles and the tortoise want to predict peoples' running performance from their age. In determining age the tortoise has cleverly asked his participants for their passports and has noted their date of birth, before letting them run half the distance between Achilles and himself. Achilles, however, has given his participants a questionnaire consisting of statements such as, "I feel old," "I don't run as fast as I used to," and "I admit to wearing a toupee." Unsure about what to do with the data so gathered, they decide to solicit advice from methodological experts. In this article, the author creatively presents in five acts their journey to gather theory in order to get their latent variable model to work with Achilles' data.