I Give Apollo Fonzarelli ‘The Talk’

Parents dread their children reaching the age when they have to give them ‘the talk’. You keep putting it off, thinking your kid isn’t old enough to be interested in such adult issues, but procrastination may put your child at risk. Yes, I couldn’t put it off any longer and this week I decided it was time to give my children the talk on the dangers of time travel.

Parents know they have an obligation to teach their kids about sex, avoiding drugs, never drinking and driving, and excusing yourself to the bathroom before the check arrives, but time travel is potentially much more dangerous. You never know what kids are up to behind closed doors, and isn’t it possible they might be working on a time machine in there? And isn’t there a slight chance the machine will be successful and they’ll go back in time, change history, tear the fabric of the universe, and as we’re sucked into a giant black hole everyone will call me a bad parent?

I recently reviewed the family rule with my 8-year-old son Apollo Fonzarelli.

Dad: What do you know about time travel?

Fonz: Not much. Just that it can destroy the world.

Dad: That’s right. It can destroy the world if you go back to the past and make changes. You know the family rule about time travel, right?

Fonz: We can’t do it. What if we’d die if we didn’t time travel?

Dad: In what situation would you die if you didn’t time travel?

Fonz: What if you went really far into the future and there was a black hole?

Dad: But what were you doing in the future? What’s the point in asking if it’s okay to time travel to save your life and get away from the black hole if you already broke the family rule by traveling to the future?

Fonz: No. I mean someone tied you up and sent you to the future and a black hole.

Dad: Then it would be okay to time travel away from the black hole. What do you do if you see another kid time traveling?

Fonz: Um…

Dad: You tell an adult. If you see a kid time traveling, you tell an adult. What if all the cool kids are going back in time? Would you do it?

Fonz: I would say why not go in the future and bring something back that hasn’t been invented yet and make a billion dollars.

Dad: Like what?

Fonz: Like a transgobulator.

Dad: What’s a transgobulator?

Fonz: Huh?

Dad: A transgobulator?

Fonz: What’s a transgobulator?

Dad: I’m asking you. You just said you’d go in the future and get a transgobulator.

Fonz: What’s a transgobulator?

Dad: Forget it. You should never, never time travel, even if all the cool kids are doing it. What if your friend tells you it’s for a good cause? What would you do if your friend told you to jump in his time machine so you could go back in time and save Abraham Lincoln from being assassinated?

Fonz: He got assassinated?

…..

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