what's YOUR favorite acronym?

Because my life really is quite wonderful and I don't have anything major to get upset about, I get to notice and be driven up the wall by little stupid things.

(Reality check: when you're biggest frustration is something like the restaurant giving you regular Coke instead of Diet, or a baseball game running late and delaying your favorite TV show, you are living a DAMN GOOD LIFE. So count your blessings and don't yell at your waitress.)

A little stupid thing that keeps popping up to drive me nuts these days is the process you have to go through to sign up for secure services online, such as bill payments, insurance accounts, etc. Specifically, the "security questions" you have to choose and then enter your own answer to so that if someone else were to try to log into your account, they'd be caught red-handed by the fact that they don't know that your first car was a 1973 Dodge Dart or that your first pet was a goldfish named Fartface.

(Note: neither of these applies to me, so don't go trying to log into my insurance website. But I do know someone who once owned a goldfish named Fartface. And it will TOTALLY shock you to learn that my friend was an 8-year-old boy at the time.)

The unique thing about these particular questions is that their answers don't change. This kind of question seems rare. Instead, I keep seeing questions like "what's your favorite song?" and "what was the name of your best friend in high school?".

Like, hello, do you remember high school? The whole point of being a teenage girl is that your best friend changes according to which way the wind is blowing and who will pass notes for you to the cute boy she sits next to in Spanish class.

And does ANYONE have one favorite song that has always been and will always be their favorite song? I can generally narrow it down to the same few, at least until my mood changes or someone comes out with a new CD or I go to another music festival. But one constant favorite? You've got to be kidding me.

My favorite ridiculous question thus far is one option on the Cigna health insurance website where I had to create an account this morning: "What's your favorite acronym?"

Acronym? ACRONYM? Who the hell has a favorite acronym?? Granted, if you held a gun to my head and asked me this question, I could think of a few I enjoy. LASER, for example. Which apparently in some circles stands for "Lots of Applied Scientists Eat Regularly" (I am not kidding). And of course, if you start looking, you can find quite a few to chuckle over.

But seriously, who (besides perhaps our friends at the AcronymFinder blog) actually spends enough time thinking about acronyms to have a favorite that distinguishes them from the general population? Who feels so passionately about their least favorite vegetable that their hatred will still burn bright enough to help them log onto their bank account a couple years from now?

Even the "name of your first pet" question is tough for me. The first major pet was Rascal the dog, but he came only after we'd buried countless goldfish and a guinea pig. The first goldfish, the one I won at the McLean County Fair by successfully tossing a ping-pong ball into it's cup, definitely had a name, a name that was undoubtedly glorious enough to make those few hours he lived after we brought him home from the fair feel bright and loving. But not a name memorable enough that I have any recollection of it now.

So my point, if indeed I have one, is that this is dumb. Ask me a questions whose answer won't be different a week or a year from now. Ask me my mother's maiden name, or whether I've ever gone skydiving. Ask me if I think George W. Bush should be impeached. EASY questions.