Matt Jong-il

He tightened the knot on his Fender guitar tie, shoved his arms through the sleeves of his blazer, and -- at the crack of dawn on a Saturday -- headed for Tokyo with a teacher and some classmates to participate in a Model United Nations event.

About 12 hours later he waltzed back through the door. "I was North Korea," he declared.

North Korea? A belligerent nation? How did that happen? I had him pegged as a Canada, or Kenya, or maybe Greece. Please tell me the seats were not doled out on the basis of personality.

His father recalls the Asian and Middle Eastern history electives Matt took last year at his school in Northern Virginia. Courses like that aren't offered at Matt's current school. "Matt probably knows more about North Korea than most kids his age so he's a logical choice for that seat."

Dad's right, as usual, but that reference to the Middle Eastern elective gives me something else to think about. "Matt! Did you use my computer this morning to research children's television programming in Muslim countries?" Matt looks sheepish. "Um, yeah, sorry. I needed to brush up on Hamas tactics. I saved your work in a file named 'sorrymom'."

"Whew, I'm just relieved to learn you put those pages on my computer screen. I had a nagging concern at the back of my mind all day long that my computer had been infiltrated by a radical terrorist group."

"Why are you mentioning this in your blog?"

"This is what I call a pre-emptive strategy, Matt. If I should ever get pulled over for some heinous traffic violation, failing to use my turn signal at 3:00 am say, and then compound the error by rolling my eyes at the police officer writing the ticket, a slimy 'senior government official speaking on condition of anonymity' will likely spoonfeed the contents of my computer to what passes for a reporter in the post-Watergate era. My only hope of avoiding life imprisonment or worse rests with the readers of today's post, at least one of whom I hope will have the foresight to print this entry and stick it in a bank vault, preferably in Switzerland. Then they can testify that you were conducting research for a school assignment."

Dad gets the last word. "Well, Jong-il, you come by your paranoia naturally it seems."