Raider of the Lost Amazon

I am a pretty good mom, and I tend to indulge my children and grandchildren, particularly when it comes to books. I love books and encourage the love of books in my progeny. To that end, I provided my kids with the password to my Amazon.com account so they could buy books whenever the mood struck them.

However, you may have noticed that the Amazon has flowed into venues other than books recently. (I say recently though it has been a matter of a couple of years, but it seems recent to me- I was one of Amazon's earliest customers. I'll tell you how long ago it has been since I first sailed down the Amazon; they were so grateful for my business in the early days that I got Christmas gifts from them. Now that everyone shops online and they are a retailing giant, they have forgotten all about me... isn't that just the way it goes? Where would they be without me?)

Anyway, while I was in Michigan, visiting my dear ole daddy, hubby accessed my email account. He wasn't snooping, he was helping troubleshoot why I wasn't able to get email on the laptop I had taken with me. He couldn't help but notice the 553, 000 emails from Amazon.com, either confirming a payment or the shipping of an order.

"Kathleen, my sweet, I think you are being far too indulgent, allowing the children to use our account in this fashion. I think it would behoove you to change your password, and not give it to anyone at the earliest opportunity", he said.

Or words to that effect.

Actually, what he really said began with "What, are you nuts??!!" and ended with "Good grief, woman!"

So I changed my password and the kids were very mellow and cool about it; very appreciative of the past use of my account but completely sanguine about being cut off from future purchases. All was well.

Except...

I got an email from my son that read "Will pay you the $10 for the book when I see you later this week."

What book?

An email from Amazon.com told me what book!

I shot back an email to my son. "How did you do that? I changed my password!!"

I almost immediately got a call from him. He sounded pleased as punch with himself for having subverted my restrictions. "Tell me how you did that," I demanded. He just chuckled. My son is a charmer, with a great chuckle and adorable dimples when he smiles or laughs. I was fondly visualizing those dimples when he said "Go check your email".

I set down the phone and went to the computer... where I found an email TO myself FROM myself. "AWK! What the hell?" I bellowed, and from across the room I could hear him laughing on the other end of the phone line. "Just playing with you, Mom", he laughed and hung up. He did not tell me how he had done that either.

After work, I received a text message from him to give him a call, which I did.

"Just thought I should tell you. I've changed your Amazon password," he said.

"WHAT??!!" I seemed to be saying that a lot today.

"Yeah, I was going to let you find out the hard way, but decided that was too mean."

I just stood there silently for a few seconds, then asked with a sigh, "Okay, what's my new password?"

I could HEAR his smile. "It's 'damnitjake'" he said.