Text Bullet Indentation Glitch

Whenever I try to do the following using the regular type tool in an illustrator file:

- Sample Text

Instead of Illustrator just letting me have the hyphon with one space after and then text, it automatically creates a bullet hyphon and when I uncheck the Bullets button in the Paragraph parameters tab, it deletes the hyphon and spacing altogether.

The only work around I've found is to start typing letters, go past the first letter, type the hyphon and space, copy the hyphon and space, then paste it to the beginning of my sentence.  Very tedious if I'm doing this many times.

Seems like a glitch, no?  I feel like I used to be able to do this in the past.