Agnostic Dyslexic Insomnia

The old joke goes: What did the agnostic dyslexic insomniac do? Answer: He stayed up all night wondering if there really was a dog.

Tonight, as with so many past nights, my brain is on fire. This makes sleep a problem. Before I reach for a stiff drink to put the fire out, it is perhaps worth spelling out why this is the case. The problem is, I have a huge pumpkin head that houses a large and unusually robust brain.

A few years back, Mum told me that I said my first words at 5 months old. “How long was it before I started speaking in paragraphs?” I asked her. “About a week,” she said, and for the first few years of my life I wouldn’t shut up.

“My girlfriends who had kids warned me that the first year or two are going to be pretty boring,” she said, then added: “You were never boring!” She tried to put me down for naps but that was simply impossible. My mind wouldn’t slow down enough to allow it. Eventually, Mum figured that out and instituted quiet play time in my room instead — breaks for her mental sanity.

Please don’t take any of this as me saying, “Oh I’m so smart.” My kid brother Christopher has called me the dumbest smart guy he knows. There’s a lot of raw processing power there, sure, but it hardly feels like it’s even mine. It’s more like I’m a fairly normal guy trapped inside a super computer.

So before I break out in a binary solo, let me pour that drink and force sleep mode. Goodnight all.