Born in the wrong era? No. There is no wrong era.

Once upon a time there lived a young boy at 19A harvey avenue. He was slightly daft, but remained a happy child nonetheless. One fine day he went for a walk with Tita Pearlie, and as they were walking along the road, he saw these white stones scattered along the sidewalks.

Being the inquisitive child that he was, he went over to one of them and picked it up. He examined it and saw that they were slightly different from the white stones that he would usually find covering the bases of the palm trees along the way.
These white stones were rounder and were more varied in their sizes, while those white stones were angular and consistently smaller.

However, apart from their shape and size, he did not notice anything else about this white stone that stood out as particularly different from those he would usually find.

Quickly losing interest in his research specimen, he carelessly tossed it into the drain beside him and continued on with his walk.

"Poof!"

He turned around, and to his great surprise, the white stone that was previously in his hand had been reduced to a fine powder!

"Wow," he thought to himself, "how did THAT happen?"

He scanned the path before him and quickly found a similar white stone. Reaching down to pick it up, he wondered if he could manage to repeat what he had just done.

"How marvellous it would be if I had discovered something new to play with!" were the thoughts that flashed through his tiny brain.

Throwing it into the drain again, only harder this time(just to be sure), the same thing happened!
"Poof!" went the stone and a cloud of powder was the next thing he saw as the stone hit the side of the drain.

"Great. Let's find more stones. This is fun!" were his next thoughts.

He tried throwing larger ones and smaller ones, irregular ones and nice round ones, just to see if there would be any difference. And there was. The shapes did not alter the effect that much, but the SIZES did.
The larger ones would have bits of stone not powderize(as he would call it) but split in different directions instead amidst the powder cloud.

"Kind of like a mini firework," he thought, "only this was always white, and didn't need any dangerous fire to start it. Just a good swing of the arm was all that was needed."

He was around 3 years old when he first learnt of the white stones, and everytime he went for walks with Tita Pearlie he would pick up the white stones on the street and toss them into the drains by the sidewalks.

Sometimes, he would throw them onto the road to leave a white circle on it. Other times, he would pick the wrong stone and wonder why that one didn't burst before moving on to the next one.
Or he would put a few together and position it nicely so that a car would drive over it. He liked to see the big clouds that would sometimes erupt from under the tires of the passing cars.

However, as the years passed, things began to change. The overhead wires that once filled his skies and kept him in awe slowly vanished. The nice uncle outside his house that would sweep the roads also became less frequent in his visits(His bright-colored clothes always interested the boy).

The white stones too, began to disappear. What once was easily found was now a raresight for the boy. Every now and then he would spot one or two, and he would gladly toss it to watch it burst into a white cloud. It still does, but he rarely finds them anymore.

But that's the way things are.

The end.
If youth knew, If age could.