Jayden was straggling behind, and, as his father's back was turned, a pit bull jumped over a back-yard fence and lunged at Jayden.
As its own Marines stumbled wearily across friendly lines, much of the Afghan platoon that worked with them was straggling behind, unable to keep pace.
His family were ahead and he was just straggling behind.
Straggling behind Sofia was her scarf-less, blanched-out, middle-aged mother, struggling under the weight of her heavy school backpack.
A second photograph, posted by UN staff on Tuesday, showed that the boy was straggling behind a larger group of refugees.
Although British schoolchildren perform reasonably well compared with those in other countries, average standards are not improving despite billions in extra spending, and a stubbornly long tail of underachievers straggles behind.
On the final weekend before the Iowa caucuses, the presidential candidates straggling behind the leaders – Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio for the Republicans, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders for the Democrats – carried on with brave faces, despite sinking poll numbers and ambivalent voters.
Signalling that, for now at least, Mrs Clinton will be first among equals in his foreign policy team, the President-elect draped his arm over her shoulder as they left the press conference, with the rest of his new team straggling behind.
And you have the judiciary straggling behind, with perhaps one judge here or there willing to speak out, but for the most part blindly devoted to precedent and the concept of "finality" and therefore — absent DNA evidence — unwilling to entertain the possibility that, for all these years, the courtroom's guardians of science might have gotten it wrong.
