Some days I'd like to take a pass on passwords

In junior high school, I was one of those kids who could never figure out combination locks.

Was it two rotations to the right, one to left and one back to the right?

Or was it one to the left, two to the right and half a turn left?

Combination locks actually intimidated me. It would have been less stressful to pull a suitcase on wheels behind me going from class to class.

By the time I hit high school I pretty much had solidified the fact that I would never become a professional safe cracker.

Although when I got to university I did discover that I could use my meal card to slip open the lock of my neighbour’s dorm room when she went home for the weekend but neglected to turn off her alarm clock. There’s only so much beeping over the course of five hours a person can take.

Nowadays, with technology being what it is, it’s not locks that you need to get past to get into things. It’s passwords.

And it's not like when you were a kid and you wanted to pass by a friend who was blocking your way and they said, "What's the password?" and you said, "Please," and they said, "No," so you said, "Pretty please," and they stepped out of your way.

No, now we have to pick passwords that no one else can easily figure out.

Not sure about the rest of you, but my life feels like it is run by passwords.

I have way too many to remember.

You’d think after my kids ask me 24 times what our password is for Netflix I would remember. Or they would too. But nope, every time the question is asked it’s a guessing game. To add insult to injury I even have it written down and it’s still a guessing game because when they ask if it’s all in caps, lower case or one letter is capitalized my response every time is: "Try it all ways and tell me what works."

Presumably that's so that the next time they ask I’ll remember.

But who are we kidding, I still won’t.

I have a list that contains 27 different passwords for many different things, like banking, phone services, website log-ins, social media accounts, wifi, laptops, etc., etc., etc. Because I don’t want people to know what those passwords belong to should the list every fall into the wrong hands, I’ve included codes that – in theory – are supposed to tell me what each password is for.

Not surprisingly my system doesn’t work.

All I can say is thank goodness for the ‘Forgot password’ feature that pops up everywhere.

Of course you have to find a password that’s "strong" enough. One that has a special character, a capital letter, a number, and on it goes. So instead of your password being the word Password (this is just a really poor example I’m using to make a point) it has to be Strongpasswordlinkyellow2756*!

In other words, in making sure no one can crack your own password, you have to pick one that you yourself will also never remember.

Not exactly a piece of cake. Or, as they say in the password world: Pieceofchocolate_mintcake_ spinklesnotvanilla4972!#