My social algorithm may be broken. Lately I’ve been seeing a flood of sentimental posts lamenting how “kids these days” wouldn’t survive back in my day. Depending on the author, “my day” ranges anywhere from the 1950s to the 1990s, but the punchline is always the same: We were tough. Today’s kids are soft.

Those posts got me thinking about my own childhood in the late 1980s and early 1990s. One photo in particular comes to mind, taken when I was maybe three or five years old. We didn’t have a pool, so in the heat of a Northeastern summer, my parents would fill a five-gallon bucket with water and plop me in. Submerged up to my neck, surveying the backyard from my makeshift infinity pool, I felt like I was living in peak suburban luxury.