OK, I admit it, I hacked a phone, but come on, we've all done stuff we now regret! Like that time a boy in my class ate his Dad's dinner for a bet and won. Except he didn't win the battle with his father, if the black eye and bruises he was sporting the next day, proved anything.
There's a huge difference in what I did and what is being alleged in the UK right now! Mine was a victimless crime. My dignity was brought back from the brink of extinction on that fateful occasion.
One night back in 1997 I saw a cute girl run out of a pub with a mobile phone ringing in her hand, as if it was a grenade about to explode! This was long before smokers were banished to the pavements to indulge in their addiction, so I had no real excuse to follow her, unless I pretended to be in the same predicament! I followed her, pretending to have one of my imaginary phone chats.
As I spoke to myself on my mobile, I imagined the scenario of our future lives together. Girl takes call, boy does too, they lock eyes and both roll them to heaven as if to acknowledge each other's immense importance, that they had to take calls on their mobile phones immediately. They throw caution to the wind, fling their mobiles into the air, embracing in a passionate kiss and live happily ever after, free of mobile phones and clothes!
What actually happened was, I drunkenly tried to interrupt her phone call to tell her how beautiful she was, that I also owned a mobile phone and that we should be together because we had at least one thing in common. Note to self, never mix alcohol with an emotionally retarded idiot, i.e. ME!
I should have let her take her call in peace and then struck up a conversation about how cool we were to have mobile phones, but the booze in my belly caused me to flap and flail my arms, while pointing to her phone and mine. I had no idea what message I was trying to convey, but there was logic in there somewhere, I'm sure of it.
She continued her conversation on the phone and whipped out a business card from her jacket, handed it to me and disappeared. Not magically, of course, she hailed a taxi and left. I returned to drinking on my own in the bar. Just me my whisky and my mobile phone.
After staggering home in the early hours I came to the perfect drunken conclusion that I should call her and arrange for us to meet and fall in love. I rang the number on the business card, but only got her voicemail. It was 3am after all. My aim was to leave a short and sweet message for her asking her out on a date. I failed.
I rambled on for ages delivering the most cheesy and immature chat up lines (worse than anything heard on the long since dead 'Blind Date' TV show) into her mailbox before hanging up in a panic as my sober flat mate came through the front door.
He shook his head in parental disgust at me! 'You're going to regret that message tomorrow and for the rest of your life. I was outside the door the whole time and heard everything.' He said, as he tsk tsked his way to bed.
I shouted after him, questioning how dare he tell me what I will or wont regret and that he had no idea of the evening I had and the mobile phone princess I had met earlier and our future live together.
He then asked me to repeat back to him the message I had just left. I couldn't, as I couldn't remember it! That was the moment my friend turned into my knight in shining armour.
He told me how to phone her mailbox and listen to her messages, so that I could hear the verbal vomit I left all over her mailbox. I'm not proud of my actions, but when I listened to what turned out to be three messages (I only recall leaving one) I had no option but to save myself a visit from the police, her big brothers and a psychiatrist, so I deleted all three messages instantly.
As I said, we all do stuff we regret, but I don't regret hacking that phone and erasing those messages.
I was the one who left those messages, so technically they were mine. So, as old blue eyes once sang 'Regrets, I've had a few......'