Yup, an important day in every young journalist's life... the threat of legal action.

Let's start from the beginning.

I received a press release from the sheriff's office late one afternoon about a man arrested for child abuse. I'm not going to go into any more detail, but it involved alcohol.

I wrote a story based on the release and ran it twice.

So today, my boss comes in and asked if I ran a story on this guy, because he wants a copy of it. He's on hold. It took me a second to place the name, and once I did, I pulled up the story and and punched up the line the guy was waiting on.

Now, the coversation might have had a little more impact on me IF THE GUY WASN'T SCHNOKERED OUT OF HIS FREAKIN' MIND.

The whole conversation was a little drawn out, so I'm not going to go through all of it. Here are some excerpts, and when you read the part of "Asshole P. Drunkface," be sure to use a wasted, slurring voice.

Asshole P. Drunkface: "You have no, no... proof. That I did anything. You can't prove anything."

Me: "Sir, the story never says you did anything. It just describes what you were charged with, using information provided by the sheriff's department."

Asshole P. Drunkface: "Well, the... the... Sheriff's office doesn't even know what they arrested me for."

Me: "The SHERIFF'S OFFICE doesn't know what they arrested for?"

Asshole P. Drunkface: "Well, what do YOU think they arrested me for? You don't know. You don't know."

Me: "Uh, it says here in the story you were arrested for child abuse."

Asshole P. Drunkface: "Oh. Well, you... you shouldn't have said that about me."

I then employed the turbo-bitchy technique of being really, really nice and polite, no matter what he says.

Asshole P. Drunkface: "You... You... You're sleazy. That's a... sleazy thing you did. Yeah, sleazy."

(I cover the phone and tell my manager that he's wasted and now he's calling me sleazy.)

Me: "Well, I certainly appreciate your feedback. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

(He also told me he was a "fucking professional," and that I defamed him, which is of course, complete bullshit.)

And so on. Until...

Asshole P. Drunkface: "Well, I plan to sue the radio station."

Me: "OK, you are way out of my arena here. Let me put you on hold and hand you over to the station manager."

He hung up before the manager could pick it up.

Not a huge deal, but for some reason, it gave me this huge adrenaline push. I was shaking when I hung up the phone, even though I didn't feel intimidated. Weird.

To cover my ass, I pulled up all the info I had on the story, and a list of other news sources that ran it, and put it on the manager's desk. That's about all I can do. But there's no real threat here, because I simply didn't do anything wrong.

In fact, I'm a little proud of myself for handling this OK. I've been backing down from confrontations lately, which is both uncharacteristic of me and annoying.

Jamie power! Yeah!