Frustrated. No, that’s not my password, but it could have been, along with angry, pleading and eventually defeat. That is how I felt last week upon turning on my “smart” phone after its nightly charge. A word of warning for all those smart phone users out there: if your phone sends you a notification that there is an update available, DON’T DO IT, unless of course you’re absolutely sure you know your password. After installing the new update, it was quite obvious I did not know mine.
Question: If a smart phone is so smart then why does it have to ask for my password? Shouldn’t the phone already know it? They say that dogs can take on their owner’s personalities. Guess my smart phone has finally taken on mine because when I was asked to input my password, I did, but the phone didn’t work. I was clueless about what to do.
In my defense, forgetting the password to unlock my phone really isn’t my fault. After all, it’s not the only password I have to remember. There are 64 more.
Poetic license: A brief departure from the known facts of a story in order to create an effect. I assure you, in this story, my pen has wielded no such literary tool. I actually have 65 passwords to my life. And associated with each of those 65 passwords are three security questions. Forget any one of them and I’ll find myself locked out of an account, my email, or in the case last week, a not-so-smart smart phone.
It was indeed a much simpler place and time when we only had one password to remember. But for that we will have to travel back a long, long time ago to that old familiar street not so far away, a street called Flamingo.
Boogers: the easiest and funniest password to remember if you’re a kid — especially a kid growing up on Flamingo. Boogers got you into clubhouses, tree forts, or Cliff Condos (our three-year dig into a sandstone cliff located on the vacant lot next door to Neighbor Thomas). Boogers is a universal word and is the only password word aliens understood. It would get you a ride on their spaceship. That is if aliens ever landed on Flamingo – and we all knew they would one day.
One password for everything: yes, growing up on Flamingo was indeed a simpler place and time. After announcing the boogers password if we couldn’t gain entry, the solution was simple. We’d throw dirt clods at the person guarding the entrance until they let us in. Unfortunately, that solution didn’t work with my smart phone.
Unlimited: unlimited texting, calling, and data is not really unlimited if you forget your phone password. The problem was simple, the solution not so. With the current update, my phone asked me for my current password. Unfortunately I had forgotten it, but I had put a reminder in the most secure place I knew.
You guessed it. The phone password, along with the other 64 passwords and all the security questions assigned to them, were in the notes section of my phone.
Locked: Secured or fastened. In my case locked meant denying entry without the correct password. Back on Flamingo, if you forgot the password, you were granted as many guesses as you needed. Not so with my not-so-smart smart phone. After just 10 tries, the phone is locked making any additional attempts for entry impossible.
Luckily for me, I was able to guess the correct password after only nine. But this caused yet another problem.
Change your password often: After so many failed attempts to gain access, my smart phone suggested I chang my old password. So I did. Unfortunately, my not-so-smart smart phone failed to inform me that when I make the change, it changes everything that is connected to it. Now I can’t get emails or text messages on my computer. The computer is asking for my new password. I entered it and it didn’t work. It’s been a week now and I’m still trying, but still with no success.
Boogers: That was my new password for the phone. Now that you know it I have to choose another. Or I could just leave it. That way if I forget and get locked out of my phone again, all I have to do is look up this story.
Besides, except for those kids on Flamingo, there’re probably not many folks out there using the password boogers.
[Rick Ryckeley has been writing stories since 2001. To read more of Rick’s stories, visit his blog: storiesbyrick.wordpress.com.]
