Yee-ha! Yahoo Mail, here we come!

Now that I knew you could have e-mail without being a computer owner, I was a happy camper. Yahoo! came highly recommended, so Yahoo it was. I found Yahoo and started the process of signing up. Ouch! This would be my first of many more experiences with frustrating sign-ups and log-ins. First came the user names. Taken. Taken. Taken! I soon discovered that you had to be pretty creative about nicknames, unless you wanted to be Joe999999. But it's not too hard for me to come up with creative nicknames. My friends and family have given me a variety of appellations. They love to call me names. After the user name came the frustrating password errors. Four dozen tries. My arms nearly fell off! I started hacking in a frenzy, and voila! Open sesame! Suddenly, I was in! But by then ~ you guessed it. The enchanted password had been anger-driven gibberish. It was a secret password all right. Not even I had a clue. I had a user name and a password, but not a clue as to what the password was. I couldn't ask them to e-mail me a new password, because I had no e-mail. That's what I was trying to get! So, I had to add a one (1) to the end of that coveted first username of mine. And do the whole process over again. Many times, I have envied the person who finally got my first user name when that account probably expired for lack of use. But, no matter. Just think of it. Now I had mail! That mystical critter, e-mail, that I had heard about for so long... All the TV ads: You've got mail! Bling! And now, I actually did have! I e-mailed my friend, Terri.

"Yahoo!" she said. "I'm glad you picked an e-mail address that reflects your mountain heritage."

Oh, the perils of Bugbones...