Cell phone spy can create embarrassing possibilities

There is a spy in your midst, ready to spread your most embarrassing secrets.

The spy apparently has a mind of its own and can contact any one of your closest friends and broadcast your every word without your knowing a thing.

The “spy” of course is your damn cell phone. Fifteen minutes after getting a cell phone, you wonder how you ever lived without one. The convenience of making calls from the road, or anywhere else, makes life so much easier. Having all of your contacts on “speed dial” is a godsend.

Naturally, there is a flip side.

The first time I noticed the spy was last summer when Blue Eyes and I were rowing out to the yacht Daybreak. We had bags of stuff crammed in the Zodiac. Somewhere in those bags was my cell phone. We unloaded the bags and went for a delightful, if timid, sail.

When we went to visit her parents that night, they told us that my phone had somehow called their home phone and the “spy” transmitted our boat conversation, which was captured on their answering machine.

Imagine the embarrassing possibilities.

All we could figure was that their number was the last called and the right button was pushed while loading the boat. After that, I tried to keep the keys locked to avoid a reoccurrence. You know how long that lasted.

Last week, my cousin Jerry and I were sitting side by side at a family gathering.

He is deaf as a haddock from years of playing rock guitar. I had an ear infection and could not hear a thing. We were talking about what shambles our lives were when my lovely niece approached and said, “One of you two morons has a cell phone ringing.”

It was moron Jerry who owned the ringing phone. He answered it and said, “There is no one there, just a lot of people talking in the background.” He checked the phone log and found that I had called him from my cell phone, which was in my jacket pocket. I checked my own phone log. That’s right. I had called him, hands free.

No explanation.

Last summer, while driving to a canoe trip on the mighty St. Croix River, we called Walter Griffin at the Belfast bureau of the Bangor Daily News to rub it in that he couldn’t get the time off to go with us. When Walter came to work, his answering machine had about 10 minutes of the conversation in the truck, headed north. The call never had shut off. I had left it to the mechanically challenged Maine Guide Phil (who still has not mastered the intricacies of e-mail) to shut the phone off while I drove.

Once again, imagine the embarrassing possibilities. We could have been talking about Walter’s excessive appreciation of Russian literature or ancient civilizations.

It is a national phenomenon.

Up to 70 percent of all 911 calls from cell phones are dialed inadvertently, needlessly occupying emergency operators, the government reported last week. The Federal Communications Commission is asking consumers to help stop the accidental calls by locking their phone keypads, turning off automatic 911 dialing features and avoiding programming 911 as a speed-dial number.

“The unintentional 911 calls are certainly a serious problem and they divert scarce public safety resources,” FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin said. When cell phones are jostled, the speed-dial number or automatic 911 key can be activated and the emergency number dialed.

Tell me about it.

Lock your phone. Turn off that spy, before it’s too late.

Imagine the embarrassing possibilities.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.