A view of the world changes when one realizes there aren’t anymore children

No kids anywhere. Took a walk thru my neighborhood on a Monday afternoon. A random stroll to get out and enjoy the pleasant spring weather and smell the burgeoning of life after a long winter. It was late afternoon, the time children should be home from school and team sports and music lessons. I’m rambling around in Shoreline, a small satellite town on the north border of Seattle, Washington. 

Where are the children? It was quiet, so quiet, too quiet, but not serene. Something felt ominous in a peacefully insidious way. I began to stop here and there on my way to look around. Wow. There weren’t any kids anywhere. They were not outside playing in the yards or running around in the woods and fields back of their houses. They weren’t inside watching television or listening to the radio or chatting on the telefone, things the youngest generations don’t really do anyway, yes? Nor were any children inside glued to laptops and old desktops or glommed to their smartfones playing games and lost in the banal labyrinths of social media. Yes, it wasn’t just children’s obsession with technology or a retro efforts to play outdoors in nature, but there were not any children anywhere to be seen.  Continue reading →