Nobody Warned Me About The Passwords

When I was younger, I had this vague image of retirement.

I imagined leisurely mornings. More cups of tea. Perhaps the odd crossword puzzle. Maybe even some gardening... Anyone who knows me knows that the plants and I have a very easy relationship. My kitchen is like an indoor forest. It reminds of an old Australian Crawl song... 'the gardens full of furniture, the house is full of plants." Except in my case, my garden's full also!

What nobody warned me about was the passwords.

Sweet Jesus, the passwords.

At sixty-four, I spend half my life trying to prove I am actually me.

Everything requires a password. Banking. Email. Streaming services. Shopping accounts. Government websites. Medical appointments. My fitness watch. The television. The remote thing that controls the garage door. I fully expect the toaster to demand two-factor authentication any day now.

I like my phone, where everything compares me to the thing it has mapped and knows it is me...

Oh but passwords... Heaven help you if you get one wrong. Not only have you entered the wrong password, but now you're locked out because apparently you are a criminal mastermind attempting to infiltrate your own Outlook account.

Then comes the reset process.

First, they send a code to your email. Except you can't get into your email because you've forgotten the password. So they send a code to your phone, which you can't find because you've put it somewhere "safe", which in my house means it has vanished into another dimension.

By the time I finally gain access, I can't even remember what I wanted in the first place.

We used to remember phone numbers; admittedly, they weren't that complex then. I knew everybody's birthdays. I could recite addresses from twenty years ago. Now I have forty-seven passwords and can't remember why I walked into the laundry.

Apparently, this is progress.

And don't get me started on the requirement to have one capital letter, one number, one symbol, one Egyptian hieroglyph and the blood of a virgin just to sign in and check your electricity bill.

Then they helpfully ask if you'd like to save your password. Of course I would. But no. Apparently saving it on one device doesn't mean it will appear on another. That would make life far too simple.

Meanwhile, my mother managed perfectly well with one key and a purse full of twenty-dollar notes.

I don't remember her ever needing a verification code to boil an egg.
Nobody warned me about the passwords.

And if retirement was supposed to be relaxing, somebody forgot to tell the internet.