The TV series The Wonder Years is one of my favorite TV series. The series depicts the social and family life of a boy, Kevin Arnold, in a typical American suburban middle-class family from 1968 to 1973, covering the ages of 12 through 17. This time period parallels my own childhood and adolescence. The difference in my case is the fact that I grew up in the Panama Canal Zone. As my wife (aka Mrs. Nowotny or Long Suffering) would say, I was almost American. But as she would quickly state Point #1, she would make her Point #2, that I was not Panamanian either. My Dad (of blessed memory) always said that when President Carter signed the Panama Canal Treaty in 1977, Canal Zone kids lost the only country they ever knew.