Fuck You, You Can’t Come In

Maybe when you were a kid there were still games like when you all had a little club and you had to give the secret password to get in the “tent.” You’d yell the incorrect password gaily (that word still possessed its original meaning back then) and then they would happily deny you entry.

Well, okay then, maybe when you were a little kid the only games you played were on a PlayStation.

No matter.

Today having a password is a big deal. How many passwords you got, huh? No, really, how many? What do you do, a variation on a theme, say, by starting with a very familiar password and then just running it backwards for one site or machine, or maybe you stupidly (as they continually remind us) keep the same password for everything?

Or maybe you have three familiar themes and you spread them around. Some places demand you have more than 6 characters, but your original only had five. What do you do? Hmm, my phone number’s out, that’s too obvious. Dad’s name . . . no . . . favorite movie first three characters plus my house number . . . no, too obvious . . . (As if some wily hacker will figure out what your favorite movie + your dad's name is + diabolically put two and two together, or maybe run that evil "kracker" code box that will run through every combination until it gets to yours, like in Wargames. As if.)

Okay, I don’t want to know how you got your passwords, and I’m not going to tell you how I got mine. But sooner or later, like a handyman with a beltful of fifty keys, you’ll be walking around with fifty places that require a password. Some are near worthless, like that stupid mp3 site you were forced to join just to hear one song.

But some are your bank account. You definitely don’t want someone knowing the password to your checking account #4617-0098-876.

So what the fuck do you do? You can’t write them all down—you’re cautioned a million times not to do that. You can’t possibly remember them all, unless you do the “variations on a theme” thing that I mentioned earlier. And even that is iffy. You get into the cycle of "Is it this combination of that password, or did I run it backwards this time? Did I put a hyphen in there . . . ? Did I use the "1" as a "!" or did I run it naked this time? What the FUCK DID I DO?" This of course always happens when you really, really need to get into that account now.

And if, like I was today, your million passwords somehow don’t accompany you and you’re forced to recall them (*cold sweat* “Jesus, why doesn’t that work? I swear that was the one I had for this account . . .”) you are truly, my friend, forked up the Grand Behind.

There’s gotta be a better way.