Frank J. Buchman

Cowboy • Horseman • Writer

Correct Words Are Still Very Important

Password is a fun game show even for us slow thinkers.

Actually, it’s one of the few television shows us old cowboys can still watch without getting red behind the ears. Although TV gets very little of our time percentage-wise, we remember watching that show decades ago, and have even seen it a couple of times in the past year. Fortunately, it airs on one of the three stations our set receives these days.

Words have always been fascinating to us, and appropriately so as a writer of various compilations. Often, we describe one thing and question if that is the most appropriate word for such, then refer to a thesaurus to check our choice. We often can’t remember the name of that book, but always find it interesting and helpful.

Forever, seemingly, memorization of certain numbers, and specific key words, has been necessary. Most people can remember their mailing address, even occasionally recalling the correct ZIP code, after three decades of having the same one.

Eventually, most people can cite their telephone number from memory, even though few only have one these days. Likewise, there are maybe a couple of frequently called numbers of others that can be recalled readily.

While there are many people who don’t know their Social Security numbers, we’ve known ours since shortly after we got it as a teenager. We knew our driver’s license number, too, when it was the same as SS. Odd as it is to many, we know our credit card and Quarter Horse codes, must be because we use both way too often.

For obvious security reasons, modern technology requires many passwords to access use of computers, credit cards, etc. There are too many to remember, so we write the information down and then forget where we wrote it.

Now, there are two passwords for this computer, two for the one at our real job, and a third to access it at home. Additional and different specific sequences are required for activating accounts and payments on the work system.

A series of numerals is required to access telephone messages here, and two more secret letter combinations are needed to use the work phone, plus three additional rotations for accessing voice mails. Oh yes, to use the new fax also requires 15 steps to activate. Thankfully, the directions are there, but we don’t follow them too well either.

Now that doesn’t take into consideration all of the telephone numbers that we ought to know and can’t remember. We used to know our office numbers, but with our new ones, we have no recall of our office, our personal, our fax, our cell, our boss’ or our family phone numbers. One must admit that’s a lot of information for a cowboy to retain.

Some folks don’t realize it, but there are several versions of Bible interpretations. We like this one in Psalm 89:15: “Blessed are people who know the passwords of praise, who shout the bright presence of God.” Even better is Psalm 100:4: “Enter with the password: ‘Thank you.’ Make yourselves at home, talking praise. Thank Him. Worship Him.”

+++ALLELUIA+++

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