Password Please
Big Data reveals that your average adult last needed a password at about the time he was seeking entry into the secret neighborhood club – The Society of Vengeance, say, or Sons of the Orient Jade – that met hourly in the treehouse out back.
He now needs to know one of several dozen simply to advance from one quarter hour to the next at work and at home.
In the meantime, his password-remembering capability has been wrung out of the system, leaving it as dry, if the simile isn’t too fanciful, as a car engine drained of motor oil.
That earlier secret password was ordinarily of an easily rememberable nature.
It might be “valor.” It might be “Mom’s spaghetti.” It might be “courage, my friend, for help has come.”
In any event, all you had to do was to get close, and the flexible nature of this treehouse society, the forgiving nature of its Membership Committee, the fluid leadership structure, and the ever-shifting security measures in place ensured that you would gain entry as long as what you said was in English and seemed suitably mysterious in tone.
If today, having chosen for some godforsaken reason the password of F1107::xx;;2!!? as yours, based upon a mixture of your grandchild’s birthday and some random tapping on the keyboard, and you miss entering the keystrokes by a single letter or symbol, the computer immediately experiences an extinction level event and becomes an interesting doorstop, sure to provoke comment among your guests. This thing by the way costs as much as your first new car, this now-doorstop I mean.
This password of F1107::xx;;2!!?, mind you, is not the only password you have to keep in mind. There also are:
Creamedtunaontoast123!!!
Canterburytales!!!
Themurdersintheruemorgue!1!1!1!1!1!1!!!
Herewegoroundthemulberrybush321!!!
2357111317192329!!!
In all cases it seems that you must end the password with a series of exclamation points, as though you are shouting to someone on the other side of a football stadium or conversing with your hard of hearing uncle. Clearly it would never occur to identity thievers that you are doing this, since only 104 out of every 100 people do the exact same thing.
You will notice, if you are arithmetically inclined, that the last item above, this 2357111317192329!!! business, is nothing more than the first several of the prime numbers starting with the smallest and rising to some reasonable point, where you then enter your three stupid exclamation points so that the identify thievers know that they are dealing with a complete idiot.
This seems perfectly reasonable at the time. The blinking blank on the screen has asked for a mix of numbers and symbols and by God, you have given it to them fair and square.
Anyone ought to be able to remember the first few prime numbers, especially you, since you have just finished a book on arithmetic meant to bring the tardy adult up to at least a third grader’s comprehension on the topic of numbers, integers, simple computations and the like.
This is a dangerous book it turns out because it has made you think that you now know something about numbers.
You have felt awfully smart each time you put that book down at night, and generally have considered yourself to be a notch, but no more than that, below genius level on the topic.
Look at the kind of things you read! Does a complete idiot read books on addition aimed at remedial adults?
Get real.
You jot down a reminder to yourself in the notebook you keep for just such a purpose and add a note that says as clear as can be, “password = set of prime numbers followed by three !!!.”
You put this away in a place, as it turns out, where it will never be retrieved because you have forgotten where you put it, but this won’t stymie you since, as you’re prompted to do, you enter a hint to yourself on the computer screen itself and put in the words ‘prime numbers,’ careful to note as well that you follow these prime numbers with three exclamation points so as to make the identity thievers throw themselves off a cliff for being so unwise as to tangle with you.
Well, time passes, as it does.
At the time of next needing to know what the damned password is, that book on arithmetic has moldered and faded away from the mental landscape, as has that book full of all your passwords, as all things must eventually do but which things such as these especially do.
In short what exactly, you’d like to know, did this fellow who seems to be you in the past, mean when he said “password = set of prime numbers followed by three !!!”?
A good starting point for the discussion might be asking yourself what in the world is a prime number?
That book, which you commended at the time for making you smart, has shifted into reverse and is now making you dumb.
You cede the point that there is something in the world called ‘prime numbers,’ but for the life of you, you cannot divine what they are.
There might be multiplication involved, there might be subtraction. Addition seems too simple to be the key and the act of division seems too complicated.
Maybe they are related to The Periodic Table of the Elements, another book you were reading at the time, and whose central theme, layout, and examples you have completely forgotten as well.
Damn that book for making you feel smart! You would have been far better off to have used your address from the first apartment you ever lived in, though as a matter of fact you have forgotten that as well, with a comprehensiveness that is bracing in its own way, its own dismal way, up to and including what town you were living in at the time.
The fine computer people, between guffaws, try to make it easy on the consumer, and suggest that you fill the blinking box with the name of your favorite color, favorite sports team, first car, first dog, or the like for your later reference at which point they will roll the dice and perhaps, perhaps, pass along to you your original password. Surely these mental cues will bring it all back.
Now they are onto something!
This is indeed an aid to the common man who only wishes to get on his computer and pretend to do some work.
You chose as your category way back then, your first dog, and with good reason.
This dog, Winston by name, or perhaps we should call him Winston!!!, was hard to forget.
He looked, first of all, like he had been boiled down from a much larger dog, with a current excess of skin that seemed to serve no purpose.
He didn’t breathe so much as wheezed, or better put, stuttered and started in the manner of an old ill-maintained lawn mower with a faulty sparkplug whose owner had clearly pushed past the limit of its active life.
Non-athletic is one way to put this dog, squat and toad-like is another.
In any event, all in all, Winston!!! is a dog that can never be forgotten.
Or at least you would think so.
As it turns out, he can be forgotten, and not in a partial or foggy way that will eventually return something to the brain, but completely.
In fact, your first thought a mere few days later when you read the online hint to yourself – first dog !!! – is the thought: “you mean I had a dog?”
You at least have not asked “what’s a dog?” but having said that you have said just about all in your favor that can be said.
Such is the nature of memory and such is the nature of life.
It is best to come to the realization early rather than late that you will never come up with the perfect password, you will never remember it if you do, and if you remember it, you will mistype it at exactly the time you need to type it correctly.
