Progress is Weird

I have too many damn passwords. Up until the arrival of the Internet I had just one - my ATM password. Now I have several pages of them in all shapes and sizes. Some are variations of that very first password, and some have felines involved. I need to look them up each time I need them. Do I really need a password to order something on line? If I order a jigsaw puzzle do I really need an account? Come on people! Don't take yourselves so seriously. You aren't banks or drugstores, you are merchants. All you need is my mailing address.

There are many progressive things that I love - my Mac (though we're in a fight right now), my Blackberry, the Net. But was it so bad before we had these things? So we weren't in constant contact with others. But we had answering machines that we could check remotely. We had electric typewriters with white-out tape. At least we weren't bumping into people in the street or getting hit by cars while texting. And what's with texting? How do grown men use those tiny little qwerty keyboards? Why can't we just talk?

One thing I do wish we'd had when I was a teen is cell phones. That way I wouldn't have had to sit home all day waiting for a phone call from a boy. Now I sit at Starbucks all day checking my email on the Blackberry. Progress, or just a new normal?