You don’t “surf the net.” You paddle around in it leisurely in your tiny, private little boat called your browser. Inside your browser is the stuff – the essence – of your life. Your address. Your credit card info. The full domain of your favorite porn site that knows to arrive just when you summon it with the first two letters.

When your friends come over, sometimes you just want them to leave so you can go back to your laptop and be with that portal that really, truly knows you.

“Bye guys! Now to WebMD that foot fungus. Browser, this is just between you and me.”

Like a dream character on any show about teen witches, your browser comes in with a built in memory-sweeping feature. “We did not just look at my ex’s sister’s Facebook page for 45 minutes, browser. Forget this now.”

It doesn’t need to reflect, it will bow down and delete everything it knows just for you.

Here’s the deal. We don’t like doing this. Every time you delete your history, you end up typing “f” to get to Facebook and your browser is all like “We don’t know what F.com is. Hmmm.” and you’re like, “You’re kidding me. Browser, where did you go? Why don’t you know my library card number anymore?”

But it’s something we must do, to remind ourselves of our ever-transient existence, and also to hide how much (for boys – porn) and (for girls – high school friends’ babies) we are looking at every day.

–Becky Lang