My public school record is immaculate: 13 years and not a single detention, referral, or suspension. But that record came close to having its first blemish when I was sent to the dean’s office in high school.
In high school students would drop off notes from administrators to classrooms all the time. These usually came in one of two colors: beige and pink. Beige usually meant to call mom, or somebody dropped something off. Pink meant you went to the dean’s office.
One day in math class, I got my first pink slip.
I walked across Naperville Central High School and entered the dean’s office. I was familiar with the space since my mom did tech support in the school district at the time, and I had accompanied her back here before, but I had never been in the dean’s office as a student.
I entered the dean’s office. It was adorned wall-to-wall with Chicago Cubs memorabilia. My heart was racing because I had no idea why I was here, and I only assumed it wasn’t good.
The dean asked if I thought I was funny. I said, what do you mean?
He said my password for the home-economics career system was inappropriate. I had no idea what he was talking about. I said I didn’t know what he meant.
He spoke, “Do you want me to tell your mom about your inappropriate password?” He knew she worked for the district. No matter what my password may be, this was something I definitely did not want to happen. I said no. He then instructed me to walk down the hallway and see the woman in the career center.
Apparently my reputation proceeded me. She knew why I was there. She told me to sit down and log in. I told her, “I don’t know my account or password.”
She was incredulous. “What do you mean you don’t know your password?”
“I used this once,” I replied.
She then pulled out a large binder containing every user’s name and password. She flipped through the pages. There, amongst all the black and white was a single yellow highlighted row, and in that row was my name and my password: fuckmeimsick.
When I saw that, I laughed on the inside, but out loud I said, “Oh yeah – I remember that now.”
You see I had been listening to a lot of Mudhoney back then, in particular the song “Touch Me I’m Sick.” I knew I was never going to use this application again and decided to created a password for the ages that also captured the best lyric from the grunge anthem.
I signed in to the application with my account and profane password. I changed the password to something obsequious and signed out. The woman watched me like a hawk the entire time. My memory is uncertain on this point, but she may have had me write my new password next to my former, password, which was now crossed out. After signing out I was dismissed and returned to math class wondering what the heck just happened.
This was my only trip to the dean’s office.
Several things still stand out to me from this incident. Did the school really go row by row through all of the students’ passwords? If so, why and how long did that take? How many other kids had profane passwords? Would the dean really have talked to my mom? Also, why did they have to print out everyone’s username and password and leave it in an area where other students could see it?
That last point wouldn’t be a surprising opsec fail because NCHS couldn’t keep its ACTs secured in 2003 – and in fact were stolen from the very room I changed my password in.
As a best practice, I do not reuse passwords. Since this incident, I’m happy to report I have never used fuckmeimsick as a password because it’s in password Valhalla.