Roger Miller didn't have mobile communications on his mind when he penned the one and only song for which--being sufficiently lubricated--I ever succumbed to the karaoke craze: "King of the Road."

Miller's hobos couldn't have afforded the technology had it been available and probably would have shunned it anyway. Who in the world would they call? But those hobos were the lucky ones; they led a very untethered life.

Most of us are not so lucky. Mobile and ubiquitous Internet-based communications are great tools. You know all the benefits. They are also dangerous narcotics. Unfailing access to these drugs can lead a person to think he or she has their habit under control. They seldom have to resort to extreme measures to get a fix. But try to kick the habit and several things happen.

There is a calm that settles over you when you throw your cell phone in the drawer and say, "I am through with you," if only for a week's vacation. You suddenly lose your urge to check CNN. You forget obligations, appointments, deadlines and gambling debts. It's great. You feel 15 years younger or fifteen years older, depending on how close you are to either of those magical ages when the only person you had to or will have to please is yourself--and perhaps one other.

You look around and see more color, more detail. You take the time to talk to strangers. But within 36 hours of shutting that drawer, psychological dependencies start to rack your body with nervous twitches. Your hand spasmodically reaches for your hip or your purse for no apparent reason. A bird sings from atop your Tiki hut or wherever it is you went to escape, and your hand flies to your ear reflexively answering a ringtone, while the strawberry margarita you were holding splashes all over the woman sunbathing topless behind you and you try to act like you didn't know she was there.

You stumble into your hotel room kicking your sandals into a corner and tap the keyboard connected to the television thinking your e-mail will pop up. You swear you feel something vibrating in your pocket. You see three W's and a dot in the abstract art on the wall. It's really some Mayan fertility god, but that doesn't matter. You feel the urge to communicate with someone, anyone. But then you remember where you are because there are people speaking a foreign language outside your balcony, and their voices seem to ride the waves crashing ashore 50 meters away.

After another day or two these symptoms subside, and once again that feeling of calm takes over and you think you may never pick up a phone again. You swear from this point forward you will live this new existence where the only urgency you ever encounter is caused by the occasional bad clam. You endeavor to live in the moment for however many moments you have left.

Then, as you shed the trappings of modern communications and scoff at the insanity of real-time this and real-time that, a real need arises to communicate. You need to send something vital, something trapped within your laptop, which you swear you brought with you only to upload pictures from your digital camera so you could clear your memory stick each night. And you realize once again where you are because there is no broadband here, and you can't get anyone to give you the right string of digits to gain access, heaven forbid, to dial-up. The cell phone, which you brought with you only to call the limo when you landed back at the airport ready to begin leading your new untethered life, has a signal, but unlike your operator back home, this one doesn't cave in to multiculturalism and gives instructions only in Spanish. You curse and you panic and you swear there has to be a way. How can these savages live this way, you scream. What's wrong with them?

You begin to pray to IPseus, the goddess of ubiquitous broadband, and you make a pact that you will not forsake your tethered life if you could just get this one e-mail through. And it happens. The network accepts your mortal wishes and allows passage of your message. And so you strap your cellphone back onto your hip and put your Secure-ID in your pocket and tell yourself it's only for another 15 years. And you start whistling, "No phone, no pool, no pets. Ain't got no cigarettes. I'm king of the road."

E-mail me at TMcElligott@prismb2b.com.