I worry about running out of things. When I was a kid…I worried about running out of peanut butter, summer days, and allowance money for 45s.* My teacher would tell me “Look, Tommy,** you live in the U.S.A. Your opportunities are limitless. Our boundaries are limitless! We are a nation that doesn’t run out of things!” Still, I worried.

When I got older, I began to worry about running out of numbers. I studied baseball statistics more earnestly than my 8^th grade math, so running out of numbers was a real concern. Then, the big worry set in. What if we run out of every possible combination of telephone numbers?  Would my family always be stuck with a party line?+ Might I never have my own, private, phone number? (This was a big concern to a teenager.)

By the time the 1990s rolled around, I was toting around a bag phone++ and becoming more worried about this new thing I was hearing about…the “limitless” World Wide Web. The Internet was the new frontier connected by a fat pipeline. But if it’s just a big pipeline, as I was being told, wouldn’t the pipeline someday run out of room? What would that mean to fantasy baseball games and my AOL e-mail account? Hey, would AOL stop sending me a floppy disk*** every week? Gosh…what if we run out of e-mail addresses??!!

A career in real estate distracted me from my core worries for a time as new worries rapidly filled the space (like how to get that crawl space cleaned out before closing), but now I’m being reminded of my youthful fears. At the risk of alarming you, too, consider these recent news reports (as interpreted by my worried mind).

• The Triangle Area of NC, in a desperate attempt to not run out of every possible combination of telephone numbers, is adding an additional area code (984) as early as next spring. Be prepared for the return of party lines in the short term!
• The “limitless” Internet is running out of bandwidth. 90% of web users in the U.S.A. are using social media…each for more than an hour a week. Online video is growing at an annual user rate of 45%. Mobile device on-line time grew 28% last year alone. The touted “pipeline” is getting ready to burst…I’m sure of it.

And now this further proof that my worries were fully justified: My cell service provider, Verizon, says they will no longer be offering an unlimited data plan to its subscribers beginning July 7^th. This additional confirmation that “limitless” was a hoax perpetuated by my grade-school teacher will restrict new Verizon customers to “tiered data plans” that could cost REALTORS® (who tend to gab a lot on their smartphones and share photos of rotting hardboard siding) a bunch of money. Instead of paying just $30.00 a month for their “unlimited” plan, that same monthly fee in the future will only buy you 2GB of data…barely enough to Tweet properly. Verizon blames it on us, of course, as mobile data consumption has increased 89% in a year’s time. We’re running out of things!

So, there you have it. The story of my worst fears…all coming true. Someday soon, I’ll find my grade-school teacher (who must be well over 100 years old by now) and tell her “I TOLD YOU SO!” Until then, I’ll worry for all of us.

*7-inch vinyl records popular with 1960s youth.

**You are not permitted to call me that!

+A system where multiple telephone customers are connected to the same phone line.

++Powerful but clunky cell phone in a leather bag that held the transceiver and battery.

***A primitive data storage medium used by America Online (AOL) to distribute their software. AOL later switched to CDs…and no one wanted those either.

By Tom Gongaware