Stephen King has the PIN to my banking account. Yes, I know he’s a busy man who has another gazillion books to write. But I had to ask him to keep my PIN after it became impossible for me to remember it or my own passwords to . . . well, anything.
The first time I was asked to create a password by my bank was many years ago. I was leaning out of my car window, nervously interacting with a screen that promised to give me my money if I gave it the right combination of letters and numbers. At the time this seemed, in the words of the great old musical number, ‘bout as far as they could go. In my simplicity, I would have given that first inquiring screen a password composed of a mash-up of my two children’s names, but as neither of them had yet been conceived I didn’t. What I did instead, of course, was give it our cat’s name.
I was confident that this was a good choice. Our cat wasn’t named Fluffy or Midnight, after all. He was named Blaze for the white mark on his face. Everyone said we had just given a cat a horse’s name, but we liked it. The real problem with the name now became clear, however: it requires a Z. And there was no Z on the keyboard the bank was offering me. I had already pecked in B-L-A- and I now sat staring at the case of the missing Z, a conundrum Hercule Poirot would have had trouble solving. I chose the next best thing, or the next thing literally, which is to say a Y. Then I went on typing.
My password for the next fifteen years for all things – insurance websites, TV channel subscriptions, passwords to school portals I didn’t want to be on, and all the rest – became blaye. I was happy. I was proud. I could never forget it, and no one else could ever guess it, because even if they – whoever “they” were – figured out I was using my cat’s name, they’d never know about the misspelling, would they?
Then of course things changed. My password was no longer adequate for the hard stern world of Facebook, Yahoo, Sirius radio, GoodReads, livejournal, whatever replaced livejournal, airline clubs, hotel reward systems, professional memberships, Ticketmaster, L.L. Bean, and all the rest who wanted me to provide them with all my personal information and often my money but who denied me access to their information without least one capital letter, one symbol and one number. So I added a capital letter to Blaye at the front. Sometimes I added a capital letter at the end. Once I added a capital letter in the middle, and spent the next eighteen months typing it wrong and having to re-enter, until I was ordered by my email to re-set it all together. (I always follow my email’s orders.) I added numbers related to my own birthday, the birthdays of the two children we now in fact had, and my husband’s birthday. Sometimes I added numbers from past addresses or past phone numbers.
The result was that I stared nervously at every screen that asked me for a PIN or a password, and then tried all the variations of blaye-added monsters I had ever created. Sometimes the fifteenth try was successful. Sometimes the fifth try was wrong and I was informed I had tried too hard and was now locked out. To calm my nerves, I wrote down all the variations on a piece of paper and put it in my desk drawer for future reference.
When the future arrived, I discovered my husband had put the piece of paper through the shredder, on the grounds that if we ever suffered a home invasion the intruders would head unerringly for my desk drawer to steal my passwords. I then created a file of the passwords that existed only on my laptop. My husband said that this was the equivalent of putting your PIN number in your wallet right next to your bank card, just begging to be robbed! but I felt I had this thing licked. Every time I was asked for a password to a website I hadn’t visited in years, I could look it up on my list.
Then last year, at a time when we wanted to remove ourselves from a world of screens and passwords, we spent a weekend in the mountains. We took a long leisurely drive to get there. We wanted peace. We wanted quiet. But maybe not so much in the car, on the long long leisurely drive. So I bought a Stephen King audio book. It had three King stories on it. One of them was absolutely terrific and the other two were so-so, but hey, the man has written a gazillion really cool books and he’s entitled to a couple of off days. After we got home, we unpacked everything, but somehow the audio tape stayed in the console between the driver and the front passenger seats.
Soon after, the secure world of my password list came to an end. My bank sent me a new bank card. That was all right with me, although the old one appeared to be perfectly fine. Perhaps it was tired. However, the bank was also pleased to inform me that I had a new PIN number. It was not asking me to create one, you understand – some new, longer version of blayeBlayeblaYe!?. No, it was giving me one, this one right here. And if I ever wanted to see my money again, I better use it.
I looked at it in despair. The numbers were random, having no connection in my mind to the birthday of anyone I had ever known or any of the numbers on the houses I had ever resided in, as far as I could remember. And remembering has now become a big issue for my aging brain. The chances of memorizing a new PIN with completely association-free numbers are, let’s admit, pretty low. I couldn’t even remember what very important thing I wanted to be sure not to forget yesterday. (And why is it I remember that I told myself Don’t forget this very important thing but I can’t remember what the very important thing was?)
The next time I pulled up in my car and faced a bank screen, I shamefacedly reached for my wallet. It was true. I now had a little piece of paper with my bank PIN number on it nestled right next to the bank card itself. In my wallet. I was just begging to be robbed! When I thought of having my bank account emptied gleefully by some pickpocket soon to be in my future, I got nervous. When I thought of explaining to my husband why my PIN number was with my bank card in my wallet, I got hives.
It was then the great man came to my rescue. I looked down and there, still in the console between the seats, was the Stephen King audiotape. I took the little piece of paper with my PIN number out of my wallet. With trembling fingers I opened the audiotape box. I pulled out the disc. I gently slipped the piece of paper with my PIN numbers on it behind the disc. I put the disc back. I closed the audiotape box. I gently dropped the box back into the console.
Now there it is, ready for me whenever I drive up to the bank window and try to convince my bank to give me my money. But totally safe. No one will look for my association-free PIN numbers under Stephen King’s name. I’m good to go.
Except now that I’ve told you, of course, I’ll have to think of something else.
I forgot about that.