Today is the summer solstice. It is the longest day of the year and the official first day of summer.

On this day, twenty years ago, I was twenty-one years old and would have been living in Sea Isle City, NJ. I’d have spent the day lifeguarding on the beach at 77th Street. Around this time, I most likely would have been crushing canned beers on my way to blacking out as I watched the Phillies game, annoyed at all the kook weekenders who had invaded the shore house.

This day ten years ago would have been the summer of my third year of law school. (Due to the TBI I sustained in 2005, I took one less class each semester than my classmates. Thus, I was not studying for the bar exam because I graduated in three-and-one-half years, not three years.) That summer, I think I interned at the Defender Association of Philadelphia. I am not sure how I would have spent the summer solstice in 2011. I did not have a girlfriend, and most of my good friends had moved from the city where I lived and into the ‘burbs. …