To Catch A Tugboatcapn...

My Wife's Aunt Cathy and her five year old daughter Amy came to visit with us for Thanksgiving, and they are staying through the weekend to help Xena with the baby.

(Which has made Xena very happy.)

Last night, I was entertaining Amy by sitting with her at the computer and visiting the various websites that she likes to play around on. One of these was TyGirls.com.

Now TyGirls.com has a free tour type deal, for which you have to enter the free secret code on the homepage.

Okay.

After we played the three or four games available there, Amy wanted to log in and play around on the password protected side of the website. She didn't have her own account, so we decided to call her sister, and get her username and password.

Piece of cake, right?

Her sister hesitated for a moment, and then told me that "I don't want you playing around on that account, because I use that password for everything."

And she wouldn't tell me her password.

She's TEN.

And I respesct that. She is absolutely entitled to her own password and privacy. I will never ask her again for anything like that.

But now we still can't get into the website.

So, I said to myself, "Self... We will just set up an account of our own, and then we can play around on TyGirls.com any time we feel like it!"

Okay, here we go...

Username: Tugboatcapn

Password: {Password}

Email: tugsemail@domain.com

So far, so good.

Zipcode, State, First Name...

Date of Birth: 05/26/1966...

Age: ... Uhnm... Forty One...

(Select One:) O Male O Female

Wait just a long-eared minute!!!

What in the world am I doing!?!?

Chris Hansen will be knocking on the door any second if I do this!

I had to cease and desist on setting up my own account at TyGirls.com.

I wish that we lived in a world where I could do things like this and no one would ever accuse me of something that I cannot imagine doing.

I wish we lived in a world where a five or ten year old girl did not have to worry about keeping her password a secret.

I wish that we lived in a world where there wasn't a monster lurking around every corner, within every website, behind every keystroke, bent on perverting, damaging and destroying our children...

But we don't.

So we have to be careful, and not just for our children's sake, but for our own as well.