Four months ago, I launched a blog that I had a lot of promise: Smartphoneless.com. I wanted it to be the hub for discussion and thought among my fellow smartphoneless Americans.

And I got some amazing feedback in the time since launch, especially from students here at Mizzou. They’d see my phone or hear about my blog, and then they’d quietly reach into their back pockets and pull out a flip phone. And they’d tell me: My friends make fun of me for this, but thanks for making feel better about my choice of phone. It’s nice to know somebody else has a phone as crappy as mine.

The truth is, not everyone needs a smartphone. Not everyone needs a device that does a billion things and runs through power like Kobayashi going through a pile of hot dogs at Nathan’s.

But right now — as I explain in my final post over at Smartphoneless — I need a device that’s slightly more powerful than the flip phone I have now. So I gave in.

A few weeks ago, it started to feel inevitable that I’d get a smartphone. As I promised a few months back: If I ever felt that having a smartphone would actually help my business, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy one. And I finally conceded that, yes, this phone would help Stry.us.

So here I am, holding my new phone. Compared to my dumbphone, it feels absolutely enormous.

My friends are celebrating this the way New York City celebrates a Yankees World Series win. A former boss, who’s spent the past five years preaching the virtues of “the mobile revolution,” will be giddy.⁽¹⁾

I don’t really understand why they’re all so excited. It’s just a phone.

I will not be playing Words With Friends with these friends. I will do my best to stay away from the addictive qualities of smartphones. I’m looking into ways to protect this thing from thieves/hackers.

And no, I will not be checking my email on this new phone. That rule still applies.

But yes, I am very much looking forward to becoming one of those people who tweets about how shitty their smartphone is.

As for my old flip phone, it’ll soon go to a recycling bin near me. I’m going to miss it. It was dorky and barely useful. But it did what I wanted it to.

I’ll miss you, old friend.

Let me take you back to 2009. Newspapers were slashing staff daily. Jobs weren’t plentiful. A young, wide-eyed Dan Oshinsky was about to graduate from college.

And in the midst of all this, a strange thing happened: A big newspaper chain decided that they really liked me. They liked my attitude and my skills. They told me, straight up: We want to hire you. We don’t know what for yet, but we want you.

Over the next few weeks, I had a number of phone conversations with one of the chain’s executives. The chain had just launched a big blog project at one of their papers, and they seemed really excited about the numbers. They had an idea for me: Start a blog for our papers devoted to young people and business. We’ll give you $100k and a small team to start. Give it a few days and come up with some potential topics for us.

Understand this: I was coming out of journalism school like most J-school students. I had great clips and great ambition. I was fully prepared to start working for a newspaper on a city desk or a political beat.

I thought I was totally unprepared to lead an ambitious, new journalism effort.

I didn’t know anything about business. I didn’t read business blogs. I didn’t understand the market for business news.

The next week, I told the executive: I’m flattered, but sorry. I’m not your guy for this project.

Looking back, I’m stunned at how stupid I was. I can’t believe that I said no, and I can’t believe that I failed to even produce a single tangible idea for such a blog.

How could I have been so unresourceful?

Over the course of about 72 hours, I was given the opportunity to pitch something really impressive. I had everything I needed to start such a project: I was ambitious, I had blogging experience, and I had a good sense for how to create a voice that was readable.

Sure, I didn’t know anything about business news. But here’s the thing: I knew plenty of people who did.

I didn’t ask for their help.

I could’ve turned to my network — my friends, my former bosses — and asked for input on ideas. I could’ve generated a really impressive proposal for that blog.

And I didn’t even think to ask.

What I’ve learned since is the importance of a really good conversation. You need people who can advise you, guide you and — most importantly — ask the kind of questions that will help lead to you the right answers. When you have an opportunity, talk about it with smart people. It’s amazing how a good conversation can really open your eyes to your full potential.

I was reminded of that last week. I was down in Springfield, taking meetings for my upcoming reporting experiment with Stry.us. And in the course of a half dozen conversations, I started to notice some new themes popping up. I suppose I had been thinking about these changes for some time, but it wasn’t until I started really talking it through with others that I realized how big these changes were.

I can’t begin to tell you how thankful I am to have smart people on my side, asking good questions and helping guide this project towards an even more awesome future. Stry.us will be be stronger because of their curiosity and wisdom.

When you’re starting something new, you have to keep your eyes open. You have to listen fully.

And for goodness sakes: When you’re lost, don’t be afraid to ask. You don’t have to go it alone.

You shouldn’t.

At my first job out of college, I was told that I would get health care. Dental, medical — the usual. This sounded good to me, even though I didn’t know what a co-pay was, or a deductible, or anything else related to health care. My boss told me I got health care, so I got health care. That was that.

And about four or five months in, some co-workers were talking about their health care plan, so I decided to ask my boss about my plan. She sounded surprised — We haven’t taken care of this already? — and called in the company’s HR person. And that HR person called our parent company’s HR person.

And that HR person, on speakerphone, told me that I had declined health care.

What now?

The HR person said that an employee of my stature was eligible for health care benefits starting in the third month of employment. I had one month to sign up for health care, and then my window closed. They had sent me an email about it, the HR person said matter-of-factly. The company had a record of me opening the email, so since I had received it, that was as far as the company was legally obligated to go to notify me of my rights.

In fewer words: We did what we had to do. Case closed.

This was my first experience with contracts. I missed a single email, and I missed out on health care. This was not a pleasant first experience with contracts.⁽¹⁾

I’ve learned even more about contracts in my time working on Stry. And if there’s only one takeaway from all of my experiences, it’s this: Before you sign your name to any document, read it, review it and understand it. If you have any questions or concerns, ask them before you sign.

I’ve signed contracts the way I agreed to the Terms of Service for iTunes — mindlessly, and as though the other party has my best interests in mind. This is an easy, easy way to get screwed.

When you fail to understand what you’re signing, you’re likely signing away your rights. Once the signature’s there, it’s too late to change anything.

Here’s a real-world example. Apple’s recently released a new platform for selling books electronically. But the iBooks contract isn’t author-friendly. For example:

“The nightmare scenario under this agreement? You create a great work of staggering literary genius that you think you can sell for 5 or 10 bucks per copy. You craft it carefully in iBooks Author. You submit it to Apple. They reject it.

“Under this license agreement, you are out of luck. They won’t sell it, and you can’t legally sell it elsewhere. You can give it away, but you can’t sell it.”

Somewhere out there, an author is going to agree to this contract, and they’re going to go through that nightmare scenario. They’re going to get totally screwed. It’s not because they’re dumb. It’s because they’re not careful enough to really dig into what they’re signing. That’s because nobody’s ever told them that they have to pay attention to what comes before that dotted line.

But now you know. Before you sign, read the contract. Always read the contract.

I am in the midst of reading this fantastic new book, Tom Scocca’s “Beijing Welcomes You.” It’s about China’s capital city during the years leading up to and during the 2008 Olympic Games.

I was there myself, covering the Games for the Rocky Mountain News, and reading Scocca’s account, I find myself experiencing some very unusual flashbacks. As I read along, I constantly find myself saying, “Hey, didn’t something like that happen to me?”

And then I start wondering, “Wait, was I there when this happened?”

The parallels between our experiences are eerie. I find myself reading Scocca’s stories and flashing back to events that I did not personally experience but that so closely mirror my personal experience that I can almost predict the upcoming dialogue as I read along.

It’s a “Twlight Zone”-style warp I find myself in, it seems.

Take these two selections. The first is from Scocca, as he attempts to get an official media credential from the Chinese:

I turned around again, to Window 38. To one side was an unattended stack of application forms. I took out a pen and began to fill one out. I was halfway through when the case officer reappeared, now inside Window 38, looking down at me. Did I have a residence registration form? he asked. I did not. Then the local police would have to issue me one, he said, and I would have to come back with it.

Also, he said, you can’t fill out the form with that pen. He pointed to the instructions at the top of the form, which said, in English, to use “blue or black ink pen.” My pen was black, a medium-point Paper-Mate, the pen I always carried. The ink was black; the plastic casing was black. I held it up. See, I said, it’s a black ink pen.

That’s not a black ink pen, the officer said.

I handed it over. He took it and made a few test scribbles, black marks on the paper. He handed the pen back dismissively.

This is not a black ink pen, he said. This is a ballpoint.

I was defeated.

And here’s what I wrote about my own press credential drama in July 2008:

Another American journalist came, too. His name is not important. What is important is that he owns media in several large countries, countries that you’d want to control when playing Risk. His passport was thicker than a Robert Caro LBJ volume. But the Chinese were also giving this CEO a hard time about his visa….

John [the bureaucrat handling the credentials] explained the letters needed for the visa application. He looked at the CEO. “The CEO of your company must sign this letter,” he said.

“I am the CEO,” the CEO responded.

“Well, the letter must be signed by the CEO,” John replied. “But the CEO’s signature cannot be from you.”

The CEO shot me a look. Welcome, I told him, to Dante’s innermost circle of hell: limbo.

So I read on in Scocca’s book, each page sucking me further into this weird state of déjà vu. His stories and my recollections are starting to blend together. Where his words end and my memories begin, I’m not really sure anymore.

But what I noticed was the note at the bottom of the article: People.com is already using Facebook Comments, says All Things D. So I clicked over there, tabbed over to news and clicked on the first article on the page. Here’s what I found in the comments:

So maybe we need to hold back praise on Facebook Comments for a little while longer. Or at least end this theory that people aren’t afraid to say nasty things even if their names are attached.

3 Maryland Terrapins posters from 1995, featuring an ad for Erol’s Internet

1 World Cup USA 94 bumper sticker

1 pack of ‘Moochas Gracias’ stationary, featuring a picture of a cow in a sombrero

1 letter from my father to me, expressing extreme joy at the Washington Capitals’ recent signing of Jaromir Jagr

Several tiny magnets, including one from an airline called US Air, and another from the NBA Team Store

2 fake elementary school awards, including one for ‘Outstanding Participation’ in chess club

1 nose piece from my original (and only) pair of Rec Specs

1 ‘Share the Dream: Washington-Baltimore 2012 Olympics’ bumper sticker

1 copy of the front page of the Washington Post on Sept. 9, 2002, featuring the headline “Spurrier Dazzles in Debut”

1 photo of me interviewing former Maryland governor Bob Ehrlich

1 essay from my 7th grade English class, titled, “The Washington Capitals Have Just Given Up on this Season”

1 copy of a 50th anniversary magazine tribute to Bugs Bunny

1 photo of me, obviously taken at a bar mitzvah, in which I am strategically Photoshopped inside a toilet and looking out

1 photo of me in Montgomery County jail, taken during a 4th grade field trip

1 copy of the American Journalism Review, featuring the editor of the Los Angeles Times and the headline “Let the Good Times Roll”

2 Polaroids — 1 with Elroy from the Jetsons, and another with my father and sister at the Air & Space Museum

1 guide to napkin folding, as provided by the Holland America Cruise Line

1 trading card of Seattle SuperSonics center Olden Polynice

1 set of ‘moo’-themed stationary (separate from the ‘Moochas Gracias’ line of stationary)

1 copy of Sports Illustrated, featuring Mark McGwire and the headline “WHAT A SEASON”, and “AOL Keyword: Sports Illustrated” in the lower left hand corner

1 copy of the Washington Post, featuring the headline, “War Won’t Be Short, Bush Says”

1 telephone modem

1 baseball hat from the Bethesda-Chevy Chase youth baseball league

1 list of 70 potential careers, in which “writer,” “reporter” and “journalist” does not appear

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…. wwlyyyy. 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.

❡❡❡

“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 that, 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 wanted 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.