I’ll admit it — I don’t have a favorite color.
I can’t consistently rank the belovedness of my childhood pets, either. Bojangles the dog learned how to open the gate and let himself out. So he gets five points.
Ashes the cat gave my sister allergies. That’s worth about 10.
And that unnamed hermit crab down at the beach ... those were 36 magical hours we had together.
Throughout most of history, the inability to name a favorite color, pet or other bit of one’s past probably wouldn’t have mattered. But today, failing to produce an answer can lock you out of that most precious form of communication: your e-mail account.
I am always getting locked out and having to sheepishly call tech support for assistance with made-up excuses.
Me: “Hi there, I’m locked out of my e-mail. I tend to shuffle my feet, so I think I might have zapped the keyboard with static electricity.”
Tech Support:  “OK, I can certainly help with that ... let me pull up your account. For security reasons, please tell me: What was the name of your high school?”
Me: “Oh, that’s easy. It was ... Right, OK, wait. It was a saint, I know that. Saint Mary, maybe? Or Francis? How many guesses do I get? I think our mascot was a mongoose. Who was the patron saint of mongooses? Or is it mongeese?”
I always regain access eventually, but I’d rather avoid any unnecessary hassle.
Online correspondence has been growing ever more secure in recent years. The rule of thumb generally followed by network administrators is that a password should be secure enough that hackers can’t crack it, but simple enough that you yourself can remember it, but secure enough that you yourself can’t remember it if it’s 4 a.m. on New Year’s Eve and your resolution is a drunken, misguided adherence to total honesty.
Frankly, I’m not sure there is a happy medium between all those levels of security. That’s why I’ve come up with an idea that would bolster the economy and help keep us from unnecessary lapses in communication. Basically, I think there should be a new field of technology professional whose job is to verify our identity through our unique talents. A typical exchange might go like this:
Employee: “Yes, hello, I’ve forgotten my password.”
Tech Support: “OK, let me just pull up your account ... For security purposes, I’m going to have to come up to your office and make sure you can walk from one side of the office to the other on your hands.”
Employee: “Fantastic, I’ll start moving the filing cabinet out of the way.”
Not only would this create jobs, but it would help co-workers learn about each other. Now, of course, this might not be totally secure. Some people have shared talents that could be copied.
But I’m not worried about it, personally. If there’s someone out there who can recite the whole “Monorail” song from the “Simpsons” like I can, I just don’t see them as a security threat.