Every morning when the house is quiet – the boys off to school, husband at the office – I sign onto my laptop.
This morning was no different. I depressed the On button and within seconds the screen alighted and a small cursor asked me for my password. So I entered it. It’s like second nature, this password. Took no thought at all.
After an hour of typing (read as “writing”), I decided to take a break and do what any normal, red-blooded American does. I checked my Facebook page.
I need my email address and password to enter. Fortunately, this information is saved on my laptop so I never have to enter it. An hour later (and don’t tell me you can get in and out of Facebook in less time for the first visit of the day – it’s like going to Target for one item and spending $80 – every time), I decided to check my Goodreads account to see what’s happening in the reading world.
In goes my email and password, as requested. No problemo.
Late morning, I needed to start my paid job. I’m a teleprospector. Exciting, I know.
Another email and password required at the gate.
I’ve signed into four different sites, used four different passwords and two email addresses, all before lunch.
I received a text from my son who’s at school. Plz put money into my lunch acct. Thx.
I jumped onto the school website, clicked onto my online lunch account and was greeted with this message:
Enter email and password.
I did. This is what happened.
We were unable to recognize your login/ID and or password. Please try again.
My palm hit my head and I smiled. Silly me. Wrong password. I tried again.
And got this: We were unable to recognize your login/ID and or password. Please try again.
Hmm..I mentally sorted through my password vault trying to decide which word I assigned to the Lunch site. It’s got to be one of these. I tried another.
This is what I saw: Hey idiot! Has it been that long since you’ve paid for your son’s lunches? Why can’t you remember your password?!
When in fact, the screen said this: Still unable to recognize your login/ID and or password. Please try again.
WTH? I tried – very hard – not to throw my laptop across the room. Very hard. But I was tempted. After several attempts that included various forms of capitalization, I got the dreaded condescending message:
Do you want to re-set your password?
NO! Because that admits defeat! I will NOT re-set my password!
I started talking to the laptop: “I don’t want to have to leave this site, go to my email and wait for you to send me a note to re-set my password, then return to your site and do this again! That takes precious minutes away from my already busy schedule!” (Facebook hour notwithstanding)
Breathe. I’ll return to this later. The boy can use a reality check and not have food at his beck and call. There are starving children in the world. He should understand some pain.
Where was I? That’s right. Taking a lunch break.
My son – the same one who expects lunch – grows three inches a year just to annoy me, and needs jeans. So, I ventured onto the Hollister website, where I’ve purchased clothes dozens of times before. I explored the site and thirty minutes later, had a full cart and was ready to make my purchase.
I got this question: Are you a returning customer?
Well, thank you for asking. Yes, I am.
Enter password.
I did. This is what I saw:
Your password is invalid. Try again.
I did. I tried three times until the site wouldn’t let me try anymore. So, I signed in as a new customer, not getting any credit whatsoever for my purchase and I had to re-enter all of my shipping/billing information which is somewhere ALREADY IN THERE!
Ahem.
Got a text from husband. Did you register the boys for basketball?
I tried years ago to push the sports sign-ups and all extra-curricular activities onto my husband’s plate, but he pushed back – successfully – making some outrageous claim that he “needs to focus on keeping us in the house” or something like that.
I jumped onto the sports website, adeptly navigated the screens to find the basketball registration form, filled it out in duplicate for each child and when I went to pay, got this message: Are you a returning member?
Oh no. I am a returning member.
I clicked “yes” knowing already what would happen.
Please enter your password.
So I did. Again. And again. And again. I got rejected more times from this organization than I did over the past three hours of telemarketing, which is quite a feat because I get hung up on often.
Do you want to res-et your password?
NO! I DON’T WANT TO RESET MY *****G PASSWORD!
But if I don’t, then my children won’t play basketball this winter and somehow this will affect their future and I’ll be blamed.
So, I swallowed my pride, and with angry pounding on the keyboard, admitted I forgot my password.
I’m a password loser.
Everyday I’m asked for a secret code or word or both to enter sites, or my own house, or to use my debit card. It seems everywhere I go, everything I do, requires some sort of act of initiation. And because I was advised not to use the same password combination for everything, I varied them all just enough to make me crazy. I simply cannot remember what words or numbers I’ve assigned.
I finally decided to take a proactive measure and reset all of my passwords and stored them in my phone, on a new app my friend told me about so as to never have a problem entering, ordering, viewing or paying for anything. (“Password Manager” for anyone experiencing similar issues).
My phone asked me to input a password to save all of my passwords. No joke. This is what my life has become.
I assigned one new password – for everything (don’t tell anyone): ForgotMyPassword2.
There. Who’s the loser now?
Does anyone else have this problem? If so, please share…
And, as always, have a wonderful day.
~Kim
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kimberlywenzler 