I-Robot, Not

by Jody Worsham
All rights reserved for midget Swiffer

Is anyone else as annoyed as I am with all the "prove you aren't a robot" messages that come across your computer screen when you are ordering ...oh...say diapers?, vineyards?, burial plots?

Even when I am reading a friend's blog and I want to write words of encouragement or sympathy or just give a compliment, I have to prove I am not a robot, like a robot could give a flip about raising grapes or any empathetic words.

Before I can hit "publish" I must retype teeny tiny fuzzy numbers that appear on my screen.  Enlarging the print only makes the fuzzy numbers  wider and fuzzier, not clearer.  The squiggly lines all run together.  Making them larger simply makes the lines look like a big map of the  Mississippi River drawn by a drunk captain of a steam ship missing its paddle wheel.

If I cannot prove that I am human, does that mean I am morphing into a robot?

To reassure the humanoid population of over 65-ers, I have outsmarted the "prove you are not a robot" security check.  I just type anything in the space.  Sometimes I type the eye chart from my optometrist's office. Whatever I type, it will be rejected for not matching the security code, but I just keep doing it.  By the fourth or fifth time you will see in very VERY large type:

PRINT THESE LETTERS AND NUMBERS

  i B  65+

Works every time.
i