Charlie: Do you think it will take about five hundred years or so for a time machine, a real time machine, to be invented?

Cassie: I really do not know. Probably not in your lifetime.

Charlie: Yea. That’s a bummer. Don’t even get me started on flying cars.

Cassie: Flying cars?

Charlie: Yea. It could happen! I really want to ride in a flying car.

Cassie: I can think of plenty of things I’d like to see get invented before flying cars. Like a cure for cancer….and one for Alzheimer’s.

Charlie: Yea. That’s true. I think that’s gonna happen in my lifetime, but maybe not yours….because you ARE getting old.

Cassie: I know it.

Charlie: You’re not BAD old. Just starting.

Cassie: Yep.

Charlie: Usually there’s one kid at every school I’ve gone to who has cancer.

Cassie: Probably many more…kids you don’t even know because they aren’t in your class or in the same group of friends as yours. Cancer pretty much touches everyone. Either you know someone who has had it, is currently fighting it or has died from it.

Charlie: Hmm….Who died of it in our family?

Cassie: Grandma BJ’s first cousin, Lee Ann, and one of her uncles I think. Grandpa Dick’s father, Grandpa Denton (your middle name comes from him) also died from a brain tumor. Then, Grandma Dot (your great grandmother whom you never met) she had colon cancer but she lived, cancer-free, for many years after. Eventually, she died from Alzheimer’s Disease. Grandma BJ had breast cancer, too, when I was pregnant with you, but she’s okay now.

Charlie: Grown-ups. No kids?

Cassie: No kids. Though Lee Ann, Grandma’s cousin, was very young, only in her forties. That was extremely hard for the family.

Charlie: Did she have kids?

Cassie: Yes. Two. They were older. But it’s a difficult thing to see someone you love so much pass away…and then you have to go on with your life.

Charlie: That’s why you want a cure for cancer?

Cassie: Yes. And improvements in treatments for the disease, especially for kids. Right now a lot of the medicines to treat cancer are so harsh that even though they kill the cancer cells they damage a lot of the body’s healthy cells too.

Charlie: And it makes the kid more sick?

Cassie: Yes. The side effects can be brutal for the patient, especially for children.

Charlie: (Silence.) I’d still like to see flying cars.

Cassie: I’m putting my money on a cure for cancer.

Charlie: Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion.

Cassie: Or their own passion for the future.