When, not if, we create a time machine

Declan asked me the other day if I was alive when everything was black and white. I laughed and told him everything has always been in color and that he was likely referring to television and photographs, which were limited to black and white during their early years.

I continued on whatever task I was busy with at the time and didn't think much further about his question. Declan apparently wasn't satisfied.

The following day he hit up his grandmother with the same line of questioning. She responded in a similar fashion, with an adoring chuckle before proceeding to describe the wondrous time she grew up in.

"We didn't have computers, or cell phones. Our TV was in black and white and usually only got one channel," she explained.

Declan furrowed his brow as his imagination processed the environment she described. He pondered it quietly for several minutes, as my mother folded clothes and casually added items to her history lesson.

Eventually he broke his silence and responded with a candor only a grade-schooler is capable of.

"When they invent a time machine, I have to remember to bring my tablet when we visit your time grandma. So I won't get bored," he responded.

Apparently, kids from the future that time-travel to the past intend to look exactly like kids from the present. Regardless of whatever miraculous event is going on around them, they will have their heads buried in a digital screen.