I remember being fascinated by the clunkly mini-laptop-like Blackberry phones as a kid who had convinced themself that they wanted to be an engineer — I am still shocked at how deep my denial ran.

I don’t remember how my older sister came to own a Blackberry — as a millennial, she was on the precipice of experiencing the thrill of the autonomy smartphones provided, compared to the one number used by two cordless phones at home, offering multiple opportunities to eavesdrop.

In other words, to have a life was risky business.

One day we had a bunch of relatives over, a perfect distraction for her to leave her phone unlocked.

She was dating someone at the time and I was longing to learn more but we hadn’t quite reached the stage of being friends and my trustworthiness as a confidant was yet to be established.

Brewing with younger-sibling-evilness, I snatched the phone, made brief eye contact and locked myself in the bathroom.

All hell broke loose, she was pounding on the door so hard that my hands were shaking to the point that reading the texts became pointless, I’d already broken into a sweat and words lost all meaning.

Now I was just terrified of what awaited me on the other side.

I opened the door to both our faces read with fear, embarrassment, anger, and she snatched the phone back while all our relatives watched, wearing a range of expressions on their faces.

We’d broken right through the glass ceiling of their perceived softness and there was no turning back. Till today, they always remember that one incident when we meet.

Thankfully, we have evolved and no longer need to relive the embarrassments of not trusting each other.