I promise I'm smart... most of the time.

It's 2am and even though I'm unbelievably tired I don't want to go to bed.

My sister has a theory: people who are ridiculously smart in a particular area have to be equally as stupid in another. It's the only way to return to balance. I'm not trying to be a cocky asshole, but standardized tests and college grades have indicated that I am good with economics, finance, history, english, etc. Having a number of academic strengths means that according to my sister, my "stupid" area should also be quite large. Unfortunately, it is. I am extremely gullible. I will believe almost anything. Oh, and I am horrible with directions. Right? Left? North? Don't bother.

Back to gullibility for a minute. I have come to the conclusion over the years that my dad enjoys tormenting me. Not physical violence, of course, but he amuses himself by taking advantage of my extreme stupidity (gullibility). He knows I'll believe almost any story he tells me. For the first ten years of my life I was convinced that my dad played harmonica with Elvis. He told me long stories about Graceland, life on tour, and their songs. Later, when I came home with a shiny new hockey trophy, he explained that they didn't have that sort of technology when he was younger. In fact, they didn't even have metal back then. I must be a very lucky kid to have a shiny trophy - when he was younger they had to carve trophies out of stone. You see, it was a lot of work to make stone trophies. Eventually they switched to metal. Now kids like me, lucky kids like me, could put a trophy on their shelf. I believed him. I actually believed that they had stone trophies.

The saddest part? I was fifteen. I am so ashamed.

My brainpower does not protect me from falling for fantastic stories. By now I should know better than to read scary books before bedtime. In Munich, I read a spy novel about the KGB and couldn't sleep for three nights. I thought a Russian thug was going to break down my door and haul me away to some basement in Moscow to be interrogated about international weapons trade. Tonight, I thought I would take a break from my extremely dull Accounting homework (reading about cost objects...fascinating) and start a new novel. It's called "The Historian."

That was a mistake. It's a book about vampires. Apparently, Dracula still lives somewhere in Turkey and anybody who digs too deep into the history of this time period gets a bite on the neck and joins the un-dead.

I realize this tendency to believe everything is not a good thing. I used to think it wasn't so bad: I only believe stories from people I trust, and only about topics that I know nothing about. If some stranger told me about stone trophies or playing with Elvis I would have laughed at them. I want to think that the people I love wouldn't deceive me for their own amusement. False. I was once confused about how the weatherman got moving world maps on TV every night. My sister, who was eight years old and thought she knew everything, explained that the weatherman stands on the top of the world, obviously. She's 23 and still thinks she knows everything, so I guess that wasn't just a phase. Anyway, I believed that story for a few years and thought being a weatherman must be the coolest job EVER.

I believed these explanations from my family. But why books? I don't believe that Harry Potter and the wizarding world are real. I only believe the scary stuff, apparently. I guess "believe" is the wrong word to use. I don't actually think that vampires exist, or that KGB spies are going to drag me off in the middle of the night. For some reason scary fiction just inspires this irrational fear that is hard to get rid of.

In Munich, I put my KGB book in the freezer before I went to sleep. I have no freezer in my dorm room... I guess my vampire book is sleeping in the hallway tonight.

Sweet dreams.


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