BSD and The Magic Word

So I don't know what I did to deserve this, but I am now newly listed as an allied blog on Blast Shields Down (a blog with actual substance that real people read). Maybe I'm just a fortunate casualty in some fight/war/jokefight/jokewar that I have no idea about, or maybe those two noble gents, Matt and Caleb, deemed my blog worthy of its own merit. Either way, I think I need to write something legit now, even though I still feel like an alien in this crazy land of BLOG. But the world is watching, so without further ado:
PASSWORDS.

Passwords then:
When young, passwords were part of games. Bedrooms would have passwords (sometimes known under the alternate name of "Magic Words," a moniker that sends chills up your spine if you think about it too much...Magic!), "treehouses" had passwords, basically anything you could enclose a space around could have a password. Our house even had a password. Afternoons I might come back from the pool or a friend's house and park my bike in the driveway with the kickstand (I was that type of kid) and run up the porch, open the mail slot and yell "Open Sesame!" maybe a less imaginative password than I would choose today, but serviceable. Now I like to imagine my parents, doing whatever adult things they did that young me never noticed or cared about and suddenly hearing this little squealy voice come through the door, summoning them to open the garage for me. Also, I imagine a really cunning burglar, perhaps hoping to steal our lawnmower, masking his voice to sound like mine and shouting the Magic Word though the door, and my parents instinctively welcoming him in, here, have some orange juice and cinnamon-sugar toast. These days, Open Sesame is a family joke and a thing my dad likes to recall when he plays "you kids used to be so cute," with us, not that I can blame him, parents' hearts are made to break, I think.

Passwords now:
Passwords are for websites and security and meant for typing, not saying. I don't think it's fair that this should mean they stop being a game, however. My college email makes me change my password yearly, and choosing a new one is the game I play now. Dictionaries are toys to me anyway, and so I play the game where I close my eyes and open to any page and point to a word. I make a list of words and pick the best one as my word-of-honor. This year's runners up include: corniche, spelunk and oblique--all very fine words, but if I could tell you the winner, I'm sure you'd have to approve. And there's the trap of a really fun password: not telling. For this past year, I've been typing the word "medulla" nearly every day and the only person who knows it is my sister. I remember one time at a sit-down Chinese restaurant with friends, we started talking about passwords. It's so strange to hear somebody tell you what their password is, like they're telling you something meant to be truly secret but so trivial a word. So over egg drop soup in quiet solemnity, a friend told me her password was "froggy," and I had to laugh because the idea of froggy having secret meaning and possibly unlocking bank accounts and private emails is completely crazy. So medulla2!, I say goodbye, and welcome in the new year of *******0!