I was 19 years old when I had the best summer of my life. I don’t remember now what was so great about it, but I told myself when I went back to college in the fall that I should forever count it as the best summer in all of the years I’d been alive so far. And so, the idea has endured.

Nearly everyone has a “best summer” to recall. You may, like me, not remember what you did, but you remember that it stood out as being the king of all summers, and for the rest of your life, no summers were as good. It usually took place when you were young and had nothing else to worry about except being home when the street lights came on or not denting your father’s new Buick.

For one of your summers to have qualified as “best,” you had to have given it that distinction during the season or very soon after it ended. It doesn’t count if you look back now and say, “Yeah, that was probably the best summer of my life,” because this is a feeling we’re talking about here and if you didn’t feel it then, it doesn’t count.

A few years ago, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals conducted a poll and came out with this silly statistic: The average person has the best summer of their life at 23.8 years. (Why the .8, I ask? What if summer comes and you’re merely a .5?)

If you ask someone about their favorite summer you get all sorts of interesting answers, usually involving a summer love interest or a camp of some kind or a boat or a nearby body of water — especially a swimming pool. And it always seems to center around a feeling of freedom in one’s life, a feeling that summer is endless and full of possibility and that you’re merely there to spit out watermelon seeds and drive with the top down.

Of course, there was a song involved — a summer song — that played over and over again on your parents’ car radio and one that, forty years later, makes you feel that summer in your soul as if it were yesterday the second it comes on. You’re right there again, sitting on the picnic table in your parents’ backyard, or standing outside of the family rental cabin, or cruising down a country road singing your heart out with your two best friends.

One 73-year old Jamestown native told me the best summer of her life was when Moonbrook Country Club put in their first swimming pool. “I was in love with one of the lifeguards,” she said. “He was so cute. I spent my whole summer on the diving board. We all had so much fun that summer. It was just the best ever.”

Another friend told me, “My best summer was when I worked as a lifeguard at a resort. I met my future husband and some lifelong friends. We were all in college and it was about living in the moment. We worked hard all day and partied all night without a care in the world.”

I saw some catchy magazine covers yesterday promising to tell you how to have the best summer ever, but sadly what they don’t tell you is that you can’t force this kind of thing. You can’t pencil in on your calendar on June 1st: “Have the best summer of your life.” It doesn’t work that way because you can’t plan it. Best summers are full of synchronicities, good weather patterns, impromptu introductions and a good concert schedule at a nearby stadium.

One of the best magazine covers Life Magazine ever had was in August of 1948. For all the serious issues the magazine covered — war, politics and social movements — they often reserved a summer issue to illustrate on its cover how America celebrated its summer months.

In the August issue, a little boy is standing there holding up his fishing pole. He is wearing a straw hat and a pair of overalls and he has summer written all over him. He is not 23.8 years of age and it could be that he never remembered the moment again.

For all of our desire to label things with superlatives, that picture reminds me that just about any summer is good. It’s about moments — with corn and charcoal and mason jars filled with fireflies and wildflowers blooming in the fields.

Just sitting on the front porch eating a bowl of blueberries is a good thing.

It’s important to remember that sometimes good is good enough.