Pets names, kids’ names or favorite books? We all live in a Passworld these days

If you told me years ago that my personal security in life was going to depend on my ability to retain passwords, I would have scoffed at such a piddly problem. I could always remember phone numbers and addresses of my friends and family, and most of the patients who I had to call for appointment changes in a clinic where I worked in my 20s. I was a memory phenom.

So, to be thrown by passwords? Until computers, how many situations have I had in my life that required a password?

I have six sisters. We lived in a world where sharing was not only mandatory but unavoidable. The nine of us used one bathroom for the first 10 years of my life. All the food in the house was in one reachable place.

Our clothing was another story. A lot of us were about the same size at the same time. At one point, one of my sisters was asked by our pediatrician when she changed her name from Mary Jo to Katie, the name written in marker on the band of her underwear.

We had some privacy, and I’m sure several of us had what we considered secrets. I had a diary, in which I wrote things like “I read Anne of Green Gables, and it was really good!” No password necessary.

Then something happened. I had kids, and other data began to affect my brain’s capacity to fend for itself.

Eventually, personal computers, along with pay TV, somehow became normal in our lives. My husband invented an all-inclusive one-size-fits-all major award-winning personal password, until he learned that we’re not supposed to use the same one for more than one “device” or account.

The kids still lived here when the internet reared its confounding but intrusively necessary head. As parents, we went overnight from being the smartest in the house to the least equipped to handle the new world of what is, essentially, typing.

We had both taken a semester of typing in high school, last century. Our kids learned by putting fingers on a computer keyboard. While we were processing that fact, we had no idea that something worse was coming. It was a darkly determined life-changing drag: Passworld.

There is no way to outsmart Passworld. You can list all of your passwords in a secret file that no one can access without … a password. If you die before you reveal it, it better be on a Post-it taped to your main device or in your wallet to be easily found upon your demise.

If you never reveal your password, you will probably be the first to actually “take it with you” when you go. No one has ever talked MyApple personnel into believing that they are legit grieving spouses or offspring. You will need an extra wide coffin so all your devices can be tucked alongside you as your family members stand nearby, each madly typing possible matches that you may have used based on your favorite foods, cars, pets, musicians, regimes, or Marvel heroes in hopes of evoking a “ding!” before they plant you.

If you take nothing else away from this rant, think about easing the workload that someone you love will have to deal with someday. No one is impressed that I used to be able to pick up a telephone and automatically access a number from memory. And no one can prove that these stupid passwords aren’t necessary, because unfortunately, they are.

I loved my life before Passworld. And a diary can still be locked with a tiny key.

Reach Ellen at murphysister04@gmail.com.