So, I was going to come in here today and tell you about the apology letter. It was going to be a classic. A local guy screwed up so badly with his girlfriend, he decided the only way to make proper amends was through the newspaper. Whatever he did was so terrible, no flower arrangement or box of chocolates was going to get that job done. So he was ready to go public with a letter he hoped to have published on our pages.

Awesome. And rarely done. It’s not quite as self-neutering as proposing over the Jumbotron at a hockey game, but it’s close. I know, man. I once wrote a sappy piece about my new bride and posted it in this column space. Lost a full deck of Man Cards on that one. It got so bad, I had to ask for extra options under the gender section of applications. You know, male, female or something in between.

That was a difficult time. So, I was psyched to see that this guy was prepared to take that leap into self-denigration to save a relationship and amuse the rest of us. I had plans for that story. Big plans.

But no. The dude changed his mind about the whole thing just as I was prepared to take his story to the masses. He didn’t explain why. The way I see it, the girl dumped him or forgave him, rendering that full-on humiliation needless. Maybe he’s saving that Hail Mary for something even worse he plans to do down the road.

Regardless of what happened, I’m the real victim here. Without that Pulitzer-caliber material, I’m left with nothing to write about.

So, I figured I’d switch gears and write about the new pot dispensary coming to town. You know the one. It’s moving into Auburn and to hear some people tell it, they might as well put Earl’s Guns, Explosives and Cocaine store there because that’s how bad it’s going to be. You might as well throw in a brothel and a strip joint because we’re all going to hell.

And you just know that the people doing all the fretting about this are doing it on bar stools inside one of our dozens of liquor establishments across the Twin Cities. They’ll be working on their eighth vodka tonic — hold the tonic, thank you —  and expounding loudly about how what a dangerous breed pot heads are. They spend 10 hours a day in a place that features pool-cue brawls and Friday Night Knife Fights and they’re worried about people sitting at home and sucking on a pipe. They’ll rant and rave and slur on about the connections between marijuana and crime and then they’ll jump in their cars and weave drunkenly home.

It’s OK that we have a pharmacy almost literally on every block — and at all of the grocery and department stores to boot. The pharmacies dispense fists full of prescription painkillers that mimic the effects of heroin and they get robbed once a week, but by all means, get all uptight about this one store producing a natural herb with mild sedative effects. 

I was going to delve into the hypocrisy and propaganda surrounding the whole, insipid controversy and perhaps even wow you with an impressive array of slang terms for marijuana. (I’ll bet you’re silently going through your own list right now. My favorite is “ganja.”)

But then I decided that since nobody asked for my opinion on the matter, maybe I should just keep it to myself. Which is a noble and selfless thing to do, but it still leaves me with jack diddly to write about. What am I supposed to do? Babble on about nothing?

Another reporter last week was demonstrating to me how he takes notes these days. The fellow had an iPad he carries with him to town halls, public meetings, shootings in Kennedy Park, etc. The gizmo comes with a fake pen and with it, the reporter can scribble his notes right on the screen. It’s like a notebook from the Jetsons. No more running out of ink. No more flipping open a pad to discover that all the pages are already filled with notes, shopping lists and embarrassing sketches.

This reporter from the future comes back to the newsroom, uploads his notes to his computer, and then lines them up side by side with his writing program. Very efficient. 

Meanwhile, I’m bounding through the newsroom screaming and crying because I can’t find the notebook in which I scribbled all the facts of the … I don’t know. Let’s say the spaceship attack. Without those notes, I’ve got not story.

There are hundreds of notebooks scattered across the newsroom and they all look alike. I lose notebooks all the time. But El Geeko over there, he’s got all of his notes arranged in neat files sorted by date and subject. In the time it took me to frisk my colleagues (notebook theft is rampant) he’s filed two stories and gone home.

I think I might be the last reporter in the world who still carries a notebook and pen. I’m a dinosaur. A dinosaur without one thing about which to write today.

Doobage! That’s a good term, too.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. You can (please!) send column ideas to [email protected].