Photo by bump / by NCND 2.0 CC

I changed my Twitter name from @pastaqueen to @jennettefulda not long ago, and was sort of surprised this didn’t seem like a big deal. Here I was, using my REAL NAME online, something that ten years ago was recommended as much as driving drunk, huffing paint and popping pimples. (And please, don’t try to do all three at once, especially if you’re using your real name.)

Back in those days (the NINETIES) we were warned that the Internet was full of dirty old men pretending to be 16-year-old girls who wanted to molest you or steal your credit card number. We’re still warned about that today, but people don’t seem to be as worried as much as they used to about using their real names online. When did this happen? Why didn’t I notice this sooner? Sometime in the past decade the Internet has become accepted as an extension of our “real lives” and not just an escape where you can pretend to be somebody else. You get [...]

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“So how was London?” Mr. Grimm asked me.

I blinked for a second as my neurons fired, trying to figure out how the man I had just met knew where I’d recently vacationed. I sat in front of his desk, staring at the computer screen he’d pulled up. Oh, right. It’s in my file. Mr. Grimm was not a purveyor of macabre fairy tales. He was my banker. I’d let them know I was leaving the country so they wouldn’t suspend my account for suspected fraud when I withdrew pounds from a London ATM.

“It was good,” I told him. I had come to the bank to close a savings account because every time I paid bills online the site defaulted to withdraw from my savings account instead of my checking account. A few times I’d forgotten to select the right account in the drop-down box and had even overdrafted once, though they waved the fees when I explained what happened. I have higher yield savings accounts at other banks, so I decided to close the account [...]

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