Time has a way of settling over things like dust. In the weeks and months after the throw, the world moved forward as it always did, carrying the echo of that singular moment along hidden currents. Newspapers reprinted screenshots. Documentaries aired clips slowed to surreal insistence. The hashtags faded, but the story didn’t. It became one of those inexplicable legends that people cited but never fully understood, like a cautionary tale whispered at family dinners or in the back rooms of small-town diners. The little man returned fully to Woodburn, to streets that remembered him but demanded nothing. No crowds, no cameras, no applause—just the rhythm of his own steps on cracked sidewalks. He walked past empty lots where leaves gathered in corners, past chain-link fences where forgotten potato sacks lay like relics of some absurd ritual. Sometimes, he paused and stared at them, half-expecting the russets to rise and fly again. They never did.