Do You Think There Are Passwords In Heaven, Or Would That Be Hell?

Posted @ Apr. 27 2011 09:00AM by jilllittle - uptown

DO YOU THINK THERE ARE PASSWORDS IN HEAVEN, OR WOULD THAT BE HELL?

By Dr. Jill Little

   The first time I was asked for a password, it struck me as comical. I was a graduate student and it was needed for the computer lab. The last time I did this secret stuff was the handshake/password
   protocol when I entered into sorority meetings as an undergraduate. Frankly, I thought it completely unnecessary then, and couldn’t imagine its import now. Why would anyone want to “break into” the
   enormous amount of boring data I had accumulated for my dissertation, say nothing about having access to the abstract mathematics that were involved and, happy to say, long since forgotten.

When I took my first college job I had to establish an email account. (If I had only known then how popular simple names would become, I would have cornered the market and made a fortune selling them back. Guess some people figured that out.) Banks got onto this moving train somewhere along the way, followed by every commercial store account. Everything has become pass- coded now AND if I “do it wrong”, i.e. try three possibilities that are incorrect, I get blocked out. Then, if I am cued to “What’s your first dog’s name?” the internal review of the seven dogs’ names I’ve had come into play. It often ends in disaster.

My children come to visit me with their computers and ask me for my wi-fi access numbers and codes and I freeze. The dreaded question arises, “Where did I write that down?” The last time (hopefully) it happened, I told my son it was some long, impossible number to remember. Luckily I found it and gave it to him with great satisfaction that I could put my hands on the darn thing. He smiled at me, letting me know that the “impossible number” was actually my phone number. (How did I not pick up on that?)

In desperation I have turned to using small, spiraled index cards that house every password I have. If I lose it I am sunk. I can’t imagine being locked out of everything in my life: banks, stores, email, credit cards, ATM, telephone; I haven’t elected to extend this to my home and car yet. It just makes me wonder what I did before all this. It seemed so nice to just pick up a phone and have someone answer it on the other end. It just seems that life wasn’t this complicated.

I realize that I am sounding more and more like my mother. She hated it when our five digit phone number turned to seven numbers to remember. Initially, some beneficent thinker used a name like ‘Howard’ as a transition mechanism for those of us who needed every memory prompt we could find. All we had to do is dial HO (which represented numbers as well) and then the other five numbers. I hope it’s simpler for Mom in heaven, since I hope to make it there as well. My cynical side keeps thinking “If there are passwords in heaven, it really will be hell.”

Find Jill at www.grandmasmailbox.com or email her at jilljlittle@aol.com.

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