After an hour on the phone and 2 Apple engineers later, they were able to sort of solve it.
I had to place my SIM card back into my sons 3GS, then enable iMessage, then send an iMessage, then disable iMessage, then remove my SIM from 3GS, place my SIM in my non-iphone device, then get an iPhone to send me an SMS, so that it unregisters my number from the iMessage service.
iMessage might appear to be free, but so is email, you are just using your data allowance. You are not sending SMS.
I put iMessage into the same bucket as facetime, where Apple seems to think they invented video calling from a phone too.
Just remember once you are Apple'd you are always Apple'd!
Now I am glad I chose Android, at least I "own" my phone and my destiny.
