Another Sign You're Leading a Pathetic Existence

Heaven knows that commerce ain't my bag. I'd just as soon write over everything I make to some central power if I never had to pay for anything or owe anything again. If that makes me a bad person, so be it.

I just finished signing up to pay on one of our credit cards; my dear esposa has been handling it for years, not that I'm Mr. Money Management. But the card does have my name on it . . . and it is my credit score.

So, for the infernal security questions, a ladder of four appears. Suffice it to say that these questions scare the hell out of me, unless they are the most obvious of notions:

• In what city did you meet your wife?
• What was your first car?
• What's your mother's maiden name?

On all of these, I think I'll score 100 percent until I can't answer questions anymore.

For this credit card, each of the four questions offered six choices. Out of twenty-four possibilities, I could maybe answer, much less remember, four authoritatively. I tried to leave the last blank. The rest posed too many possibilities:

• What was your first manager's name? (Hmm, what do they mean by "manager"?)
• What was the street name where your favorite job was? (Did I have one? Which one? And what was the address? How much information do they want? What if I forget to abbreviate?)
• After your immediate family, who would you call if you won the lottery? (Can I say the IRS?)
• What was your favorite place to go on vacation as a child? (Geez, that's a fraught question.)

And on and on. If I knew the answers—or even had any—I'd probably remember more of the questions.