Who am I? 24601

I suppose Jean Valjean didn’t have a lot to occupy his mind in the nineteen years he was imprisoned. So perhaps he didn’t find it too hard to triumphantly declare his identity: “Who am I? 24601!”

I, on the other hand, have trouble remembering who I am. Sure, I know my name, my address and my date of birth. If I shut my eyes and try hard I can usually come up with my Social Security Number. But I am defeated by all those web sites that demand that I identify myself. They want ID’s, they want passwords. When I first started registering on various sites, I religiously obeyed the rule about not using the same password. Of course I knew I shouldn’t write down information on Post-it notes and attach it to my monitor. So I wrote it on scraps of paper, most of which I lost.

Now I am starting to organize my password information (and I’m not telling where.) I don’t know which is more frustrating: clicking on a bookmark which takes me to a site where they obviously know who I am (Welcome, grannieb proclaims The New York Times , Hello b.ament chirps The Washington Post ) or trying to register at a site where I clearly registered before, because they tell me the ID is already taken. Yes, it was, by me, but I can’t quite remember the combination of open sesame words and numbers.

The most annoying site of all, at least to me, is Jo-ann.com. The first time I registered on the site, I was Mrs_Rochester. I loved that ID, but by the time I tried to log back on again, I had forgotten my password, so I had to register again with a much less graceful ID. There are two different places to log on, one if you want to order stuff and one to access the Bulletin Board to pick up useful tips about sewing Halloween costumes or lining curtains. But it is not intuitive and I spend way too much time navigating the site. I have come to the conclusion that the site is scrambled by some terrorist version of Homeland Security. They must have found multiple instances of the word “Afghan”. And since there is a book on the site which combines the word “Afghan” with “American” (it's up in the top, left-hand corner) and “Monk’s”, conjuring up images of a suspect nation and a suspect religion, there must be someone in Kabul doing his darndest to keep me from checking out the new spring fabrics.

Maybe, like Jean Valjean, I will start tattooing my ID’s and passwords on my chest.