Local Man finds himself in a constant, Sisyphusian struggle against success. He has attempted to scale buildings when drunk. He has acted in anger against drive-thru speaker boxes. He has found himself ornery, naked and, most often, confused.

And Local Man will not stop there. He will persevere; he will evolve. Local Man has not failed at all he can fail at.

The blog never happened, ⁽¹⁾ but Local Man lived on that year in our news broadcasts. He crashed through windows, busted through police barriers and achieved all kinds of stupid. I was proud to just be there to read the police reports.

But I left South Texas last week, packed my life into a Chevy Trailblazer and moved east, to Biloxi, Miss. When I was arrived, Local Man was here waiting for me.

❡❡❡

Every year, from some tiny port of call you’ve never heard of comes a story so sordid, it’s tough to believe it only happens dozens of times every year. On the Fourth of July, Local Man drinks heavily, lights off fireworks and brings harm upon himself and others. This year, in Chicago, a firework blew up in a man’s face. Fireworks exploded in a teen’s face in Tennessee. Fireworks even blew a man’s arm clear off on Long Island.

And those are just the first three links I clicked on in Google News.

But what I’m really here to say is that any of those local men could have been me, Dan Oshinsky, a respectable, not-in-possession-of-exploding-substances American who just happened to be dangerously close to the path of a toddler with a lit Roman candle on Sunday.

On the Fourth, at about 9 p.m., I drove down to the Biloxi beach to enjoy the fireworks. I did not expect that this would be a life-threatening decision.

What I know now — and what I wish I known then — was that a Mississippi fireworks show should probably come with a surgeon general’s warning. Just in my walk down to the beach, I crossed paths with a handful of teens shooting off Roman candles into and over a crowd of thousands. I came about fifteen feet away from a ten-year-old who was lighting off some $20 fireworks with the range of a Soviet-era warhead.

To put it in perspective: I hadn’t see that much firepower in one place since my visit to Tiananmen Square.

But it’s tough to blame those kids for being stupid. At least they weren’t drunk at the time ⁽²⁾

I will, however, point the finger at one Local Man (see above photo), who, for the purposes of this blog post, I will describe as Some Giant Drunk Asshole (SGDA, for short). SGDA was about six feet tall, with all the shapeliness of a small zeppelin. In tow, he had his son, who was maybe two or three years old. And there SGDA was, handing a lit match to his kid, who put it to the wick on a loaded firework and ran.

This happened, oh, about 20 feet away from me.

It was very, very loud.

And then SGDA lit another firework. And other one. And maybe five or seven more.

All while the actual fireworks display was going on.

Was there remorse from SGDA? An apology for nearly blowing off my ear when one of his miniature rockets turned into a sidewinder?

Of course not. Local Man cannot apologize for what he cannot comprehend.

When the actual fireworks display ended, the kids on the beach were down to a handful of Roman candles and bottle rockets. SGDA had lit off the last of his $100 or $150 worth of explosives.

I still tiptoed out of there like I was crossing a minefield near the DMZ.  I wanted, badly, to live. Besides, what good is seeing Local Man in the flesh if you’re not around to tell his story?

There’s this amazing moment in one of Carl Reiner’s and Mel Brooks’ “2000 Year Old Man” sketches, when Reiner is moving through a line of questions about the early days of man. He’ll get to the good stuff in a second — questions about Joan of Arc, questions about the secrets to longevity — but first, he’s got a softball. “What was the main means of transportation back then?” he asks.

Brooks’ response is classic deadpan, and he crushes it. “Fear,” he says. “You’d see a tiger, and you’d run a mile in a minute.”

We don’t have such sources of transportation inspiration anymore. Except for one, really: the fear of missing an airplane.

On Thursday, I was nearly confined to the multi-thousand square foot beast that is Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

So I ran.

❡❡❡

The last time I made the airport sprint was in San Francisco. My shuttle to the airport was late — by an hour. My flight was on time. From curb to last-call at my gate, I’d been given 14 minutes. But San Francisco International is a relatively easy airport. Each wing has its own security checkpoint, servicing just a dozen or so gates, and I didn’t have any bags to check in, so I butted in line, apologized profusely and then ran — my left hand keeping my pants up, my heavily duct-taped roller bag and belt over my head and waving behind me. I ran like Reggie Bush on a punt return, dodging travelers, spinning away from golf carts, my eyes upterminal at all times. I made it to the gate — the very last gate in the terminal, of course — in time.

I gasped.

I heaved.

But I was on the plane.

❡❡❡

My sense is that Americans, in general, love to procrastinate. We also love to be lazy, to lounge around and to waste time.

So it should follow, logically, that getting a few hours to kill at the airport would be an American pastime.

That’s how I used to feel, actually. When I was young, I’d to ride the subway down with my dad to National Airport in D.C., and we’d sit by the windows and watch the planes take off. Some fathers and sons went to baseball games or the zoo to relax; we went to the airport.

But most Americans don’t see the airport as a relaxing place. That’s why we have a phrase for the occasion: stuck at the airport. Or worse: stranded at the airport.

In all your years, have you ever heard anyone outside of a first class lounge talk excitedly about an extended airport layover? Don’t worry about me, honey. I’ve got four whole hours to spend at Boston Logan!

As a society, we are not claustrophobic, but we fear airport-based confinement, and all of its trappings: patience, non-reclining chairs and doubly-overpriced Starbucks.

Maybe it’s just the way we define airports. We break them up into sections — Terminals, we call them — but we view them with a lower case ‘T.’ As in: beyond curable. Beyond suffering.

As in: the stage just before the light.

❡❡❡

The first sign of trouble hit my inbox on Thursday. There they were two e-mails from Continental Airlines informing me that my flight to Houston had been delayed. I looked at the details. Both said my 8:35 flight had been delayed to…. 8:35. Whatever.

By the time I’d gotten to San Antonio, the departure monitors told a different story. The 7 a.m. to Houston still hadn’t taken off yet. The 8:35 was delayed until 10:15.

My connecting flight in Houston left at 10:30.

I’ll fast-forward for you: I got on a non-delayed 9:15 flight, due to land in Houston’s Terminal C at 10:10. The connection was over in the B gates, no. 75. High numbers are never a good sign, and when my San Antonio flight stalled on the runway for 10 minutes — broken radars in the control tower, the captain said — I wasn’t optimistic about getting to B75 in time.

But we touched down at 10:04, and I was sitting in row 8, and the flight attendant said that since so many people had been delayed that morning, please, for the courtesy of your fellow passengers, let’s have only the passengers with urgent connecting flights stand up when the plane stops.

The plane stopped. The first eight rows stood up.

One guy was connecting to Kansas City. Another to New York. Someone else to Albuquerque, I think.

The doors opened, and we ran.

We ran through the jetway, where the emergency alarm had sounded when the gate agent had goofed in a rush to open the doors for us. We ran through the noise and into….

…Terminal E. Not, as I’d been told, Terminal C, only a quick one-hop subway connection away from my B gate. Instead, I was in the third-to-last gate in the terminal farthest away from where I needed to go. I’d have to cover over a mile of airport in about 12 minutes.

Naturally.

But my next gate hadn’t changed: B75. At least I knew my destination.

❡❡❡

There are three keys, in my opinion, to surviving the airport sprint:

1. Use the Reverse Jinx: Sitting in San Antonio International on Thursday, I knew two things:

A. If I didn’t eat, I’d make my connecting flight but not have enough time to grab a bite in Houston, and I might not eat anything until 2 or 3. That wouldn’t do.

B. If I did eat, I’d miss my connecting flight and have three hours of waiting in Houston, with plenty of time to eat. And I wouldn’t be hungry, because I’d already eaten. That wouldn’t do, either.

So I grabbed a sandwich and secretly hoped to reverse jinx my way into the perfect scenario: eat early and make my connection. (Spoiler alert! It paid off — except for the part where I had to sprint through an airport terminal with a belly full of McMuffin. But more on that later.)

2. Be Loud: When you’re running, make sure people hear you coming. Be loud, and people will clear a path for you as you run. An airport sprinter is a wrecking ball-in-waiting, so make your presence known. Yell, holler, wear clogs — whatever it takes. There’s a reason those airport golf carts have sirens on them.

3. Look Desperate, But Don’t Panic: If you only take one piece of advice here, take this one. When you’re clomping down a terminal, you want people to look up and instantly know which person is rushing to a flight. Your face needs say, Please, for all that is holy, don’t make me stay one second longer than I need to in this place. But internally, you’ve got to stay poised. I’ve seen roller bags go flying out of control in airports. Stay in control, and let your legs do the rest.

❡❡❡

I ran right, then left, then across a moving walkway. My roller bag skidded behind me; the duct tape on the handle seemed to be holding things together nicely. I wheeled past the international terminal, passengers from Guam and Guatamala looking both groggy and very much not on high alert for me, this 6’6” thing cannonballing into Terminal D, where I could catch the inter-terminal train. Up the escalator, passing a couple on the right — sorry! — I made it to the train.

If the Google Maps tool over at WalkJogRun.net is to be believed, I’d just sprinted just over a quarter mile. In sandals. While wheeling a bag and hauling another one over my shoulder. Through an international terminal.

We reached Terminal C at 10:19. I had a chance, but the train pulled away slooo….. ooowwww…. wlyyyy. We inched along. Terminal B arrived at about 10:22. My gate was just closing, if I was lucky. Maybe the airport door hadn’t shut, too. I had two minutes, tops.

Out on the platform, there were two escalators, both headed down. The guy going to Kansas City was a step behind me, and I beat him to it. I was in full-on “American Gladiators” mode, demolished the escalator and spun onto the main concourse. Lesser airport gladiators would crumble at the sight of the Houston Intercontinental eliminator; I hung in.

I should say here the floors in Terminal B are different, older. They’re a thin layer of carpet over concrete, and I was running in sandals. The thwap of each step echoed behind me, like “Riverdance” in snowshoes.

Terminal B opened into a square-shaped area, with four corridors leading out from each corner. Gates 76 and above were up on the side next to the train.

Gates 75 and below were not.

So there was another run, this time through the square, past another food court and to the right. It was the home stretch, the last tenth of a mile sprint through the B concourse, and my legs sagged. I wanted to quit. I wanted to stop sprinting. I was defeated.

And then, the tunnel turned. There was light.

I was there.

❡❡❡

“Breathe, honey, breathe.”

I continued to pant, gasp, sweat. The gate agent, Rosetta, printed out my boarding pass. “Oshinsky? Coming from San Antonio? No way I thought you’d make it. Where’d you come from?”

E22.

“That’s amazing.”

The airplane door hadn’t closed yet, so she walked me down the gateway. I was still sucking for air. She mentioned something about wishing that she had my speed, and I laughed. No one had ever called me fast before.

I tried to tell her this, but it came out something like, “Eyyyee [gasp] mmmm not [gasp gasp] thaaat fass [gasp] ttt.”

I was boarding a puddle jumper, so my roller bag had to be checked plane-side. My breath was coming back, and I asked Rosetta if airport employees had a word for what I’ve just done.

“You know, we used to call it — well, before the trial — we used to call that the O.J. sprint.”

I looked back at her before I board the plane. I got here, I want to tell her. But I won’t go there.

Today, I believe I’ve discovered the problem.

I may be bleeding out of my anus.

Now, this is probably not the type of thing you’ve come to this blog to read, and perhaps you’ll be inclined to click away, to read about my mother or my experience with Kosher-approved pornographic advertising. I’ll understand.

I’ll admit that this diagnosis hasn’t been doctor-confirmed. ⁽¹⁾ But I’m still confident in it, partially because I can’t imagine many people have spent as much time thinking about their own ass as I have.

Some kids spent their childhoods looking up at the sky and guessing what each cloud resembled. My mother has stories of me, a two-year-old who’d come out of the bathroom describing in great detail what I’d just produced.

In fourth grade, when a family friend was asked what he was thankful for, he replied, “The toilet.” I just nodded in agreement.

At Hannukah, my siblings and I all hoped that mom and dad would gift us the latest edition of “Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.” ⁽²⁾ The toilet is where I learned to appreciate Dave Barry’s columns, where I studied the Wall Street Journal’s middle column and where I occasionally penned verse. ⁽³⁾

You get the idea.

Things get murky ⁽⁴⁾ about three weeks ago, when I started to feel an odd twinge in my right shoulder. I went to the doctor. His verdict: a pinched nerve in my neck. He told me to take two-a-day of some pill that had more Xs in its name than I cared for.

That night, after popping the first of the pills, I felt something where I didn’t want to. Let’s call it an unwanted tingle.

I blamed it on the chicken fried steak I’d eaten at lunch.

But the tingle was still there on the second day. On the third, I started to feel that something was seriously wrong. I looked, of course, to my stool. ⁽⁵⁾

By week’s end, I was really worried. I was twitchy at work. I was tingly when I didn’t want to be — and where I didn’t want to be.

On day seven, I had to drop my laptop off at the store for some repairs — a note that would seem unrelated, except that afterward, I had a sudden urge to check WebMD for advice on my condition. I went to the public library to check my email, read the terms of agreement and decided that Googling anything beginning with the word “anal” might get me banned from all city buildings for the next year.

Finally, I got the laptop back. I checked first to make sure everything was in working order with my Mac — at least everything’s okay on this end, I told myself — and clicked toward my internal diagnostic confirmation.

Gastrointestinal problems? Check. Dermatological discomfort? Check. Special sensations? That might be one way to put it. Never had such an unspeakable tingle sounded more obscurer.

I walked over to the bathroom, where I’d left the bottle of pills on the counter. I felt up my shoulder, and I thought about my other twinge. Suddenly, the pain up top was tolerable.

The symptoms are now starting to subside, but the tingle was still there today. Also worth noting: I haven’t exactly figured out a way to casually mention my temporary condition at the office. It hasn’t been easy keeping my mind off of it, either.

In a chat with my boss this afternoon, I started to drift off. My boss asked if I was listening. I assured her that I was.

“I just can’t tell what you’re thinking about right now,” she said.

I squirmed a little in my seat, and I started to assure her that I had only two things on my mind. ⁽⁶⁾

Then I decided that I probably shouldn’t think too much about any number two.

“I must have just missed your call,” she said. This was last Thursday.

But I didn’t call, I told her.

That didn’t stop her. “No, Dan,” she said. “I just got your message.”

I didn’t leave a message, I told her, because I hadn’t just called. This seemed to clear things up on my end.

My mother kept talking.

“No, but I just got it. You said you were about to meet Hunter Thompson.”

I paused, the only way a man can pause when your mother calls and insists that you’ve just left a message that you did not leave explaining that you’re about to meet gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who you cannot meet because he died five years ago.

“You’re saying that you just got a message from me, claiming that I’m about to meet a deceased Rolling Stone writer?”

“Yes,” my mother replied, and without hesitation. This seemed like a perfectly normal thing for her to say.

I didn’t know what to say next. Of course, my mother did.

“You said you were sick.”

“I’m not.”

“No, in the message. Are you sick?”

I did not know what to say. To this point in my life, I had never had to deny the unlikely voicemail/I’m sick/meeting dead gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson trifecta. I started considering the possibility that my mother had been taking hallucinogenic drugs.

But thinking out the right way to respond to this line of questioning, something started to click. Back in the fall of 2005, I did get sick, and I did cancel on my friend, Andrew, who I was supposed to go with to meet a Mr. Wright Thompson — then a writer for the Kansas City Star, and now a reporter for ESPN. I asked my mother if the name Wright Thompson sounded familiar.

“Yes, yes, that’s the one. Are you supposed to meet him today?”

I explained that no, I was supposed to meet him in 2005, but I’d canceled because, well… I was sick at the time. Another pause. The timeline began to click into place.

“Do you mean to tell me that today, you just got a voicemail that I left for you five years ago?”

I started laughing, but my mother’s tone didn’t brighten just yet. I could hear her on the other end, still reaching for something motherly to say.

“You sure you’re not sick?” she asked.

And then, finally understanding the absurdity of the whole thing, she started to laugh too.

So when I found out today that someone who we all went to elementary school with was joining an American football team in Spain, it seemed implausible. At work, I run three different Twitter clients at all times. I have a cell phone, a landline, a Google Voice number, an actively updating Facebook news feed and at least three email accounts. How the hell had I not heard about this already? ⁽¹⁾

Usually, when anything semi-important happens involving someone at home — say, two kids from my high school getting their Cal Tech-certified game theory paper on waiting for the bus published in the New York Times Magazine — I know about it. But this one had eluded the listserv, apparently.

I emailed into the group to see what the word was. A response came back: “not true, i — and i thought others — knew about this like a week ago if not more?”

A week? Three constantly updating Twitter feeds — and I was behind by a week?

I searched my Gmail account. No word of any Spanish football league teams. I emailed my friend back: Was there some alternate, super-secret listserv circulating?

Then the response came:

“The secret listserv you refer to is in fact the technologically archaic word-of-mouth.”

Oh.

Another, studying abroad: “even i knew and i am in a third world country living in a rice village.”

And worst of all, from my mother: “Actually, I knew that.”

I cannot un-know what I know. I cannot reverse time. I cannot deny what has happened.

But I cannot imagine going on knowing that one day, fourteen years ago, I may have accidentally rooted for Kansas.

¶¶

My dad used to do a bit of work with the D.C.-area Boys and Girls Club, which was affiliated with the D.C. police, which was the reason why dad always ended up as the policeman in my elementary school’s annual Sock Hop production of the “YMCA.” But it’s also the reason why we ended up at a fundraiser for the Boys and Girls Club, this one put on by the Washington Redskins.

The MC that night was Chris Berman. He did a couple “back back back” jokes, the DJ played “Hail to the Redskins,” and then Berman tossed it to the live auction.

One of the items was a trip to Kansas City to see the Redskins play. I do not know why — I was only 7 at the time, and I’d never been to Missouri before — but I asked my dad if I could bid on it. He said yes.

He thought I’d bid once or twice and get out of it.

I wanted to win.

The ballroom must’ve held a thousand people, maybe more, so it’s understandable why the auctioneer didn’t initially notice my arm shooting into the air. But around $300, my Uncle Sol caught his eye and gave him a wave in my direction.

“$300,” he said, and pointed at me.

This being my first live auction, I was unfamiliar with the bidding process. I didn’t notice other people taking their hands down after bidding. So even after the auctioneer pointed at me, I kept my arm up. He looked elsewhere. Someone bid $350. He looked back at me.

“$400,” he said.

My arm stayed in the air.

It went on like this for a few more rounds. Dad told me to stop bidding; my hand stayed in the air. But by then, it was too late. It was down to just me and one other contender.

I bid, and the auctioneer looked at the other bidder. He was consulting with his wife. How much was too much to spend on a mid-November trip to Kansas City? he was surely asking. She gave him a look. His arm stayed by his side.

“Going once,” the auctioneer said. His eyes swept the room. He caught my eye. My hand was still in the air.

“You can’t bid against yourself,” he said. The entire room laughed.

When the room quieted, he asked for a second time, and then a third, but the other bidder didn’t match.

¶¶

When you’re seven, it’s only the weird things that stick out. Going to Kansas City, I remember we flew Midwest Express out of the old terminal at National Airport, and I remember that the stewardesses gave us real silverware to eat our in-flight meal with. I remember that we stopped in Milwaukee, and that dad wanted to buy me a Green Bay Packers cheese head. (I wasn’t interested.) I remember going to a barbecue place in Kansas City, where they used paint brushes to slather sauce on their brisket sandwiches, and where the food was wrapped in the Sunday edition of the Kansas City Star. (The barbecue place turned out to be the legendary Arthur Bryant’s.) I remember the omelete bar at the hotel, and I remember regretting having gone through six or seven eggs at breakfast before the flight back to D.C.

The game itself was less memorable. We had seats in the upper deck behind one of the benches. It was cold. The Redskins lost, and I remember Brian Mitchell dropping a pass in the end zone on a 4th down. The box score doesn’t provide much help: the Redskins ran through Gus Frerotte and Heath Shuler at QB that day. It didn’t matter. They lost, 24-3.

But it’s this other memory that’s started to bother me.

¶¶

Not having anything to do on a Saturday in Kansas City, my dad and I decided to drive out to Lawrence, Kan., to see a football game.

I’d long since forgotten the opponent, but I was thinking about the game yesterday, and I checked in with Google to see if it could offer any answers. I tracked down the date of the Redskins-Chiefs game, and then cross-checked it with the KU football schedule.

The day was Nov. 4, 1995, and I watched as the Kansas Jayhawks beat the Missouri Tigers, 42-23. That’s what the box score says, but I don’t remember it. My memories from that day are hollow: a long, flat stretch of highway out to Lawrence; a half-empty stadium; and something about a giant drum. I can’t know for sure, but I’d guess that my dad and I cheered for Kansas that day.

What I didn’t know is that a decade later, I’d be enrolling at the University of Missouri.

¶¶

It’s weird, now, but I feel almost wronged by the memory. There is the Chase Daniel cover of Sports Illustrated hanging next to my bed. There is a Brad Smith jersey hanging in the closet. There is a copy of the Mizzou alumni magazine on the coffee table.

And then there is this memory, of a chilly fall day, of a horseshoe stadium, of a rivalry game that I didn’t fully understand.

A decade later, I’d fall in love with one of those teams. I’d plan my Saturdays around their Saturdays, and their glory would become my glory.

But on Nov. 4, 1995, I’m afraid that I rooted for the wrong one.

I wish I’d known then. I wish I didn’t know now.

I’m 22 years old and blissfully unaware of the world around me. Blissfully unaware, I’d venture, is one step closer to bliss than most people ever get.

But it’s that bliss that, today, reminded me of how big an idiot I really am.

I had to go to Target this afternoon because there was a hot yoga class in town that I wanted to try, and to take the class, I needed to first purchase an official yoga mat. Such a mat is the consistency of an oversized Shamwow, except that it costs $20 and does nothing that a $3 towel wouldn’t do when it’s 95 degrees inside a yoga studio and your palms are too sweaty to grip much of anything. ⁽¹⁾

There was traffic on the way to Target, so I called a friend while I waited in traffic. I kept talking as I got to the store, parked the car, grabbed a hand cart and found the oversized Shamwow that would be my platform for future yoga futility. I started walking back toward the checkout line.

Somewhere during the walk, the idiot in me took over.

For the most part, I try not to be an asshole in public, and generally, I look upon other assholes with scorn. At the top of the list of assholes in public are People Who Talk On Their Cell Phones While Urinating. Just below that, on the list of assholes worthy of title case, are People Who Talk on Their Cell Phones in the Checkout Aisle.

I decided, mid-walk, that I did not want to enter that second category.

But instead of doing the rational thing — explaining the situation to my friend, hanging up and calling back a few minutes later — I just kept walking and talking.

I walked and talked over to the toiletries aisle and picked up some paper towels. I found the grocery aisle and eyed a pint of ice cream, though I eventually passed on any. I looped through to home furnishings and grabbed two scented candles, then back to sporting goods, and over to menswear. At some point, I found myself back in the grocery aisle and decided upon a single can of minestrone soup. My handcart was getting progressively heavier. My left arm was starting to sag. I kept talking.

During my fifth or sixth loop of menswear, I looked down the aisle toward the store’s entrance and noticed that it was getting dark. I told my friend that I had to go and hung up. I saw the counter flashing on my phone. I’d been walking and talking for nearly 40 minutes, it said.

I walked over to the checkout aisles and found an empty lane. I put my things on the belt, and in a conscientious effort not to be one of those aforementioned assholes, I smiled at the cashier and said hello. She said nothing. She put my items in a bag and told me the price of my goods. A trip for a cheap yoga mat had turned into a full-on shopping spree, all in an effort to be polite to this cashier. I thanked her and wished her a nice day, and I actually kind of meant it. She didn’t respond.

I grabbed my bags, and my left arm sagged again. I didn’t feel like an asshole, which was a thought with about as much comfort as my $20 yoga mat. I only felt like an idiot.

Which is, to say, I only felt like myself.

Here’s what I got:

In particular, I’d note the “Yahoo! Image Search results:

Yahoo!, indeed.