Lonely kid with a frisbee

I've spent a good chunk of the afternoon here on the couch looking out at the lake, an hour or so just now talking to my sister. Prior to our call and still now as I write, there's a boy out in the lake parking lot with a frisbee. He looks to be 6th-7th grade or so. He throws the frisbee across the parking lot and then runs over and gets it. He spent a little time practicing some fakes like one sees in ultimate games. I'm guessing he plays ultimate.

For a little while someone with grey hair, probably his grandfather, came out and threw with him. Thinking through it logically, it was probably the cardiologist Chuck, who is married to Lynn, and this is his grandkid. But that guy took off pretty quickly.

Which brings us to the true topic of this post, which is the greying of our neighborhood and what a shame that is. It's not that the neighborhood lacks entirely for children, far from it. There are kids around. But there are a lot of folx like us too, people who have raised kids but who are in absolutely no rush to give up our houses. I've even had conversations with a very smart guy who lives down the way about trying to cobbling together a set of service providers (cleaners, repair people, caterers, medical staff, memory care, etc.) who could come around to houses in the neighborhood and provide us with a level of service analogous to what one could get in a residential CCRC (Continuing Care Retirement Community). I told him I was sure lots of people were having the same thought and were trying to do something similar but that I doubted the economies of scale would ever make it feasible.

There's enough of a decrease of kid density on this side of Chapel Hill that the town government -- when doing strategic planning for the school system -- has at least tossed out there the idea of shutting down my kids' elementary school (the oldest school in town) and razing it to build affordable housing for teachers there. Sad to say, it makes sesne. 

In any case, the kid out in the parking lot continues to wing the thing across the way and then run after it. I give him all the props in the world. If my shoulder wasn't feeling a little wonky I might go out there and toss with him, but I have doubles in the morning so must conserve my strength.