Activities associated with childhood are defining the summer of 2020 for adults and kids alike.

Inflatable pools, roller skates, and sidewalk chalk are defining summer for adults and kids alike. Last week, Jennifer Schecter hit a stroke of luck and finally got an inflatable pool for her 9-year-old son. And it couldn?t come soon enough. The temperature in New Orleans, where she and her family live, was climbing into the 90s, and the local pools, where they?d normally cool down, have been closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. After weeks of trying to buy one from a local store, she only found empty shelves.
Online, it was even worse: long back orders or prices that were more inflated than the pools themselves. She was empty-handed until a friend of hers was vacationing in a small Mississippi Gulf Coast town and found one in stock at the local Walmart. ?Everything has been so disappointing for my son for months,? says Schecter, a marketing specialist at Trahan Architects. ?So this pool has been something that we could do for him that would bring some joy and some sense of normalcy and newness at the same time.?
Schecter had the same idea as countless other people trying to salvage summer: Find something joyful?ideally something reminiscent of fun activities from the past. Instagram influencers are flocking to kiddie pools. A surge in retro roller-skating has occurred on TikTok. Sidewalk chalk has made a comeback. Papier-mâché is a craft of choice. It?s the ...