Around the world, people are using technology to develop a COVID-19 vaccine in record time and make sure the next generation can receive its education.

My associates and I are using technology to discuss 1990s sitcoms.

Listen, we’ve felt ways about politics over the past couple weeks with the political conventions, with all of your Facebook friends explaining, quite rationally, why their candidate (whichever one they favor) is the only one who can straighten this country out.

All of your Facebook friends are also historians and epidemiologists who’ve explained how our founding fathers fought to defeat the tyranny of being slightly inconvenienced with a mask. Then the other Facebook friends responded with why we should shut everything down and board up the windows at the house to self-quarantine, even on nights when you might like to go outside to see a lovely sunset.

We’ve had to deal with two different tropical systems competing for the Gulf of Mexico. Regardless how you feel politically, I feel like most people would have supported this proposal to have the hurricanes fight each other to the death.

Proposal:

What if we just convinced the storms to fight each other, instead hitting us? pic.twitter.com/SrYQI4hKs0

— Gene Wu (@GeneforTexas) August 21, 2020

We need a break. And that break comes in the form of this blog, in which I will divert attention away from these issues and take the liberty [as an American] to start an entirely different argument.

Loyal Scaiaholics know I’ve got my finger everlastingly on the pulse of pop culture, the hottest trends in America today.

Naturally, several associates and I were discussing The Wonder Years the other night. This led to a debate spanning thousands of miles across the country. And our great nation is hurting right now.

We need a collective pick-me-up.

I’d like to pose a question: Was Kevin Arnold a jerk, or just a stupid kid learning his way through life?

An associate from Indiana and I were texting the other night, discussing our plans to open a bar in Muncie. We started talking about which characters from Cheers we’d become. He claimed Norm Peterson because he’s married and found Frasier Crane unaccaptable. I, of course, would be Ted Danson, the single fella who just now realized he’s getting older but just can’t figure out relationships.

We moved on to how The Wonder Years could use an update focused on our now-retro childhoods in the 90s. He continued, “Kevin [Arnold] was the biggest jerk in TV history.”

Dumbfounded, I replied, “Howso?”

He reported Kevin was mean to everyone.

My position was he was just an awkward kid, like we’re all awkward kids.

I then broached the subject in an ongoing group text with a different group of associates, two of whom are pictured here when we used to have these discussions in person. I believe this was a friend’s wedding.

The consensus there was that Kevin Amold was learning the lessons we all learn through experience as kids. And we become a bit wiser. That’s how we learn to be decent people.

One of the ladies in the group [pictured here, in fact] settled the issue, explaining Kevin Arnold was one of her first crushes, and while he was a jerk, he was just a jerk like everyone is a jerk when they’re teenagers.

We may disagree on whether Kevin was the biggest jerk in TV history or just an awkward teenager, but the associate from Indiana and I did find common ground: Wayne was one of the most underrated characters in television history.

Also, when we watch it now, it feels strange to identify more closely with Jack Arnold than Kevin. Find someone who didn’t feel ways about [spoilers] the announcement Jack passed away two years after the last episode, and I’ll show you a sociopath.

Perhaps therein lies the lesson we can all learn from this masked, politically charged era: if Daniel Stern were narrating 2020, we could all see that things may not turn out how we plan, but someday, oh someday, we may look back at these days… with wonder.