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Passwords suck. Everybody knows it. And despite all my efforts to create clever and singularly unique ones, the best of mine can be cracked in 0.059 seconds. Less than a SECOND!

Go ahead, give one of yours a try here.

Certain sites grade them for you and reject the ones that are too easy to crack. So you keep adding numbers, symbols and gibberish until you can make no sense of it, let alone retain it beyond the time it takes to hit "enter." And every website has different parameters preventing you from ever reusing a password you recklessly store on your computer because you have sullenly accepted the fact your idiot brain will never retain it.

Laughing in the face of cyber danger, I tried saving the exponentially growing list of my incomprehensible passwords, but I couldn't remember the code word I used to label the top-secret, classified file. Hiding passwords on a computer is more difficult than hiding porn. FYI, my porn collection is filed under my blog URL. Site Stats assure me nobody ever wants to go there.

I even considered having the passwords tattooed onto some hidden skin, but soon realized, the list was becoming so massive, I'd be reduced to wearing a burka to conceal it. Even translating the list into Chinese characters to conserve space, is problematic. I can't trust some full-sleeved, Midwest-suburban tattoo artist with a pierced taint to be fluent in Chinese script. My favorite password, "wannabewriter" might become "pigshitinwok" for all I know.

We are now forced to try and outthink a computer program that can race through combinations at the speed of light. Passwords have become the new grawlix or profanitype. At least that's what they look like to be considered secure. f*C3@@u!!#again?

Coincidence? I think not.

I finally came up with the perfect solution. I can't say I actually came up with the idea so much as it simply became the norm. Whatever site I go to, I simply click on "Forgot Your Password?" and make a new one. It takes less time waiting for the email to create a new one, making said new word, and finally signing in successfully, than it does cursing like an upper-middle-class-teenage-girl and breaking into a flop sweat while audibly praying "this one has to be it."

I see my new approach as a great way to stay one step ahead of the unknown hacker/villain/sniper program that wants to gather my painfully boring personal information, steal my lackluster identity and run off with the millions of dollars I have hidden away in a secret account so secret, even I don't know how to find it.

The best part? I can crack my own password in under 45 seconds and that is f'%@@#'n good enough for me.

- Amy Hartl Sherman

Amy Hartl Sherman is a freelance writer, poet and humorist. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois with B.S. in communications, which couldn't be more accurate. A retired flight attendant, former improv comedian, empty-nester and overall wunderkind, Amy writes erratically as opposed to erotically, and sometimes humorously, while living with her husband, a Chihuahua, a barking parakeet who is minus one toe, and one toe-eating Dachshund. Her sons escaped without harm. Amy has been published in Modern Haiku, The Heron's Nest, and It All Changed in an Instant: More Six Word Memoirs.