Passwords and Birds

This morning, I was thinking about how awful it must be to be older–even older than me–and have to deal with passwords, and that’s because I cannot get into a particular government website and haven’t been able to get into it for two months and apparently no one actually works in the office. When I call this office, the message says, “due to so many calls, we can’t answer your call, so call back,” and then the phone disconnects. There is a form to fill out on the website, but no email address or actual person to reach. This office owes me money (my own money) and yet I cannot get it, and I am one of the fortunate people who doesn’t desperately need my own money that the government is holding.

When I was a little girl, I don’t even think I had a password for my bank account, just my bank book! The thing you needed to get into something (a bank account, for example) was the thing itself. There was nothing in the middle. If you loved someone, they were near you. If you listened to music, you held it in your hand. You put it on the stereo (or in the cassette deck, or in the 8-track player of your mother’s Oldsmobile 98 which eventually became your first car, or boat). If you needed something from the library or to use the phone, you just did, using your hands (dialing) and your feet (walking).

A few years ago, I posted on Facebook that I had walked to a mailbox a few blocks from my house to mail a bill and one of my friends teased me about actually mailing something, but I was happy to take that walk, especially because I was the only person on the street when Santa passed by standing in a fire truck. He laughed when he caught my eye and said, “It’s just you and me, baby,” and, I mean, that would not have happened if I had paid my bill online.

I walked downstairs contemplating passwords when, right outside my window, was this:

Birds enjoying your butterfly bush are better than computers or bank books or pretty much anything else.