Olivia Fowler

On The Way

By Olivia Fowler

How many passwords do you have and where do you keep them? This can be a troubling issue. We need passwords to order on eBay, listen to voicemail, access Facebook, our bank accounts, our tax records, my high school website, medical records, email, other online services and on and on.

We are advised not to use our birthdates, pet’s name, anniversary dates or children’s names or birthdates. Some passwords must be numerical. Some must be a combination of letters and numbers. There are various combinations required. For instance, 12 characters with at least two numbers. Some letters may have to be upper case and some lower case.

We have to remember all of this plus establish usernames not already in use by anyone else in the world.

If, heaven forbid, we have to replace an old password with a new one, we must notify whichever organizations we need access to and wait for a temporary password so we can then establish a new one.
We are advised to have a different password for each of our accounts.
We are told not to have our passwords written and stored anywhere others might have access.

Unfortunately for me, if my passwords aren’t written down I invariably forget either the password or which password is the correct one for the particular site I need to access. And if I don’t keep them in a place easily accessible, they are not only safe from the eyes of others, they are also safe from me.

I thought it would be easy to have each account password one of our dogs’ names, even though we’re told not to do that. Unfortunately their names were already in use with the exception of Red Dog. This plan had to be laid to rest because my thought was to simplify. I was confident I’d be able to remember the names of our dogs.

So then, I chose the names of different roses in the Heirloom Rose Catalogue. However, the ones I wanted to use were already in use.
This was disappointing. I especially wanted to use Peace Rose because it has personal associations.

My grandmother had a Peace Rose. It was put on the last plane out of Paris and flown to safety just before the Germans invaded. It is a thing of beauty. Oh well. It was not to be.

The problem as I see it is the password must have some meaning or I will not be able to memorize it. Especially if I don’t use it often.
So I must resort to writing them all down and keeping them near the computer.

Anybody out there who wants a record of what’s going on in my life can save themselves the trouble of hacking into any of my accounts. My recent activities are an open book.

For real excitement we ordered seeds for 180 tomato plants from Parks Seed catalogue, as well as seeds for Diochondria, a plant to spill over the sides of planters. We chose it in two varieties, Silver Falls and Emerald.

I ordered a weed puller from Burpee online. This is necessary because I lost the other one. It has a wooden handle, a long screwdriver-like prong and a lever on one side. It’s the only thing I’ve found to pull up the hated and invasive grass, known locally as Thombale, that grows three feet into the ground and loves to intertwine the roots of any desirable plant.

Last year we bought our kayaks online. I’ve gone on my high school website several times to see who has died, moved or had grandbabies.
I’ve also checked obituaries in towns where I have elderly relatives, just in case.

I could go on, but will spare you the details. It really isn’t necessary to steal our passwords to access personal information. We’ll be happy to talk about our activities much longer than anyone could possibly want to listen.