I’m writing from the summer of 1996.

Back when I was the same age my daughter is now, three years older than my son, old enough that my parents let me ride my neon green Huffy all around the neighborhood alone.

Bikes were big back then. Swimming too. Jay’s house was out of the bike-riding zone, but his parents had a pool with a slide and a diving board and a deep end that seemed so deep back then.

I liked to press my chest flat against the smooth blue lining and follow the decline all the way to the drain. I’d heard a story once about a girl’s hair getting caught in the drain and trapping her down there forever (not Jay's pool; some other pool, some other place).

Drowning wasn’t a word my parents said much, or if they did, I don’t remember it. My mother had been a lifeguard at the Forrest City Country Club. She claims that I could swim before I could walk, and I believe her, even though it sounds impossible to me now.

Like letting your third-grader splash around in the deep end without a parent standing guard nearby. Maybe there were parents there. Maybe I just don’t remember.

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I do remember playing Super Nintendo for hours, whole days lost to “Ken Griffey Jr. Major League Baseball,” “Mortal Kombat,” and “Street Fighter.” I remember Jeff getting mad and throwing his controller at the TV, or maybe it was Drew.

We were always fighting back then. Everything was a competition. We built push cars out of scrap wood and lawn mower tires and raced them down the hill that wasn’t really a hill out front of my house, an idea that came to us after watching “Cool Runnings” and "The Little Rascals."

We argued over whose car crossed the finish line first, who’d been cheated, who’d been had.

We haggled over baseball cards, too. We traded Sammy Sosa for Fred “Crime Dog” McGriff, men with real-life He-Man muscles. We went out in the field behind Jeff’s house and did our best big-league impersonations. Our very own “Sandlot,” that’s what we had back there, back then.

And that was it. That's how we filled the care-free, blistering days that comprised the summer of ’96.

But those days are gone now, and as tempting as it is to think that my kids’ summer break will never compare — that “times have changed” — deep down, I know it isn’t true.

Years from now, my children will reflect on the summer of 2026 and remember watching the sun fizzle into the lake, or building forts on Jazz Beach, or reading in the hammock, or staying up late and watching their first PG-13 movie.

I’m not sure which memories will last, which scenes will survive the crucible of their teenage years and persist on into adulthood, but if I play my part right, then they should have plenty of memories to choose from.

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