I’ve got a confession to make. I am obsessed with time. Can’t stop thinking about it.

Getting older has convinced me that grown-ups and kids do not inhabit the same order of space and time. I am not talking about the physical world of sharp corners, unyielding concrete and sharp glass. That would be nonsense. Adults and kids can bash themselves equally against that world and suffer the same consequences.

Rather, I am thinking about a child’s inner sense of the world in which we all live, move and have our being.

How long a year seemed then, and how fast it flies now. How expansive the old neighborhood seemed then, how cramped now. And how important the dramas that spun out and the games we played seemed when our neighborhoods defined the limits of our world.

So indulge me for a moment as I resurrect a bit of my world, as I was growing up during the late 1960s and 1970s, with its places, moments and people inextricably linked.

A good starting point for me is the day in December 1967 when I headed home for a well-earned Christmas vacation after months of sweating in the salt mines of Ms. McCullough’s kindergarten classroom at North Auburn Elementary School. (Ms. McCullough was actually a wonderful teacher.)

A light snow had fallen the night before, and in my arms I proudly carried a plaque I’d made of a manger scene, one of those projects our teachers concocted to keep us busy.

When I bounced through our front door, two blasts of warmth hit me: first, the physical warmth of the living room, so welcome after my trek in the brisk air; the second blast of warmth radiated from my mother’s face, as she paused for a moment from her annual ornament hanging to smile and welcome me home. That moment gave me a sense of everything home should be.

Now that I think of home, I wonder how I and my three brothers all fit into that one tiny bedroom without killing each other. It did not seem so small then, because there was always ample room for pillow fights and sock fights and games of Monster Daddy — sort of a hide-and-seek with the old man.

The latter game ended for all time when my big brother, Jim, trying to evade the paternal pursuer, dove onto a bed he had every reason to trust would be there to cushion his fall — it had been there that very morning — but found out the hard way it had been moved, so he landed on the floor on his face.

You know, I also miss sorely what snow meant to me as a kid. The excitement of snow days, likely preceded by late nights or early mornings with all of us glued to the radio, ears greedy for news of school closures. When the good news did come, our thoughts turned to forts we would build in the school yard of North Auburn Elementary, and the snowballs we’d hurl and the people whose pants we’d stuff the cold stuff down.

Gotta say, we kids were geniuses at turning ordinary bits of a snow-covered landscape into fun: a great slide out of a sloping, ice-sheeted driveway, a hockey rink out of our street.

As the year advanced, summer days brought the Auburn Fire Department out to flush the fire hydrants. There’s a photo in a July 1970 edition of the Auburn Globe news that captures the fun of one of those occasions. In it, my brothers and friends are in action in front of the hydrant between ours and the Youngs’ home, filling, then pouring buckets of cold water over each other. Sadly, several of the people I see in that photo have since passed on.

Down the road a mile or two away, there was a big barn bearing the painted image of a Heidelberg beer bottle, bold and beautiful, on the side, impossible to miss as we rolled along West Valley Highway. It lingers in my memory as the gateway to adventures unknown waiting for us at local swimming holes, including Lake Surprise.

I associate that barn with the times and places of summer, although of course, it was there all season long.

Barn’s long gone now, and to the many people today who know nothing about it, there’d be no particular reason for the eye to linger for more than a moment on the field it once occupied. Thing is, we all pass places like that everyday, unaware of what happened there. Those passersby may not know, but we Auburn natives of a certain vintage will always remember.

Another top thing, riding bikes with friends, unencumbered by helmets. I know that the King County Council recently addressed the issue, easing the requirement in cities that don’t have their own laws. However, many counties and cities still make it illegal to ride a bike without one. In Orting, for example, all bike riders under the age of 17 must wear a helmet. In Poulsbo, you have to wear one if you are under 18.

I didn’t stop to think how deeply glorious that world was until this moment. I hope everyone has banked up memories like mine. Let us know some of your special memories.

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Robert Whale can be reached at rwhale@soundpublishing.com.