Today, I had to say goodbye to my old-ass blackberry.

My blackberry had become a running joke at work, because every other employee seemingly had a new fancy pants model, whereas I, the goddamned Assistant (to the Regional) Manager, had the same one I was first issued in 2006.

(Note: It’s not the same exact one. I lost my original blackberry a few months back, and I thought that at that time I’d finally get upgraded. Instead, I got the same old model, and this one even had a crack in the screen. This should tell you about where and how I fit in with my company.)

(Note, Part Two: The picture above is not a photo of my actual old blackberry, but it so happens to be the same model and level of beat up-ness as mine.)

As you can imagine, for someone as superficial and shallow as yours truly, getting a shiny new toy is something that brings me great joy (internal rhyme intentional). So this is not some eulogy to my old blackberry. No, sir.

I was contacted by a guy in our IT department, a guy I’ve known for years and have always been friendly with. He asked me to swing by his office with my old blackberry so he could give me the new one, and when I arrived, he asked for my password so that he could make the transition.

Well.

My password for the blackberry, and nearly everything else, is a curse word. More than that, it’s a curse word buried in gibberish. Sometimes, the curse word is the middle of the password, with letters and numbers around it. Sometimes it’s at the end, with the gibberish letters and numbers before it. You get it. But the point is, the only recognizable part of the password is this curse word. And though I obviously won’t tell you what curse word it is, it’s not exactly a normal one. Or a nice one. So…there’s that.

Now, when the IT guy asked me for my password, I stumbled, reddened, and said, “Well, let me just enter it – it’s a curse word.” He smiled and replied, “I have to enter it a few times and this will take a few minutes, so why don’t you just write it down?” It was his knowing smile and casual confidence, combined with the fact that I have always been friendly and talked sports with this guy, that lead me to say, “Sure, I’ll write it down.”

After I wrote the password down, he took the post-it note from my hand with an expression of eagerness on his face, as he seemed excited in a child-like way about the prospect of a funny/naughty/cursey password. But when he read the password, his expression changed. While it was once bemused, a pall of concern stretched over his face, and he looked up at me, and back at the password, and up at me again. I didn’t know what to say and wanted to comfort him, so I blurted out, “Yeah, it’s kind of a long story.” He looked back to the post-it note in his hand, back to me, back to the post-it note in his hand. “Well, uh, I’ll give you a buzz in a little bit, then.”

I should probably give the new blackberry a different password.