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When I first watched “The Wonder Years,” Kevin Arnold’s adolescence seemed like a beautifully distant fiction. Only later did I discover that the show’s unnamed suburban world had roots just miles from where I was growing up.

The series debuted on Jan. 31, 1988, and became a childhood favorite of my parents. Although Kevin’s story begins in 1968, before either of them was born, they still recognized pieces of their own youth in his quiet middle-class neighborhood.

On the surface, the Arnold family resembles a familiar sitcom household: a stay-at-home mother, a gruff but loving father, a rebellious older sister, an obnoxious older brother and an ordinary, wide-eyed boy at the center of it all. Yet the series finds emotional depth beneath those conventions, turning everyday suburban life into something vivid and affecting.

Kevin faces the usual trials of middle school, including first jobs, crushes, fights with his brother and a difficult relationship with his father. The plots are rarely elaborate. What matters is the way each 22-minute episode captures the hazy, temporary quality of childhood and the enormous emotions hidden inside seemingly minor events.

I began watching in sixth grade, during my first year of middle school and the pandemic. Confined to home and eager to make my uneventful routine feel more meaningful, I wondered which fictional coming-of-age story my own life might resemble.

“The Wonder Years” offered an escape into another version of adolescence. Its 1960s music, vintage clothing and suburban scenery immediately drew me in, but the show also carried a sense of familiarity that I could not yet explain.

Although it was produced in the late 1980s, the series carefully constructed its 1960s setting through single-camera filming, home-movie-style footage and a soundtrack featuring performers such as The Byrds, Joan Baez and The Who.

The period’s defining conflicts are present without overwhelming Kevin’s personal story. Rather than making women’s rights, civil rights, President John F. Kennedy or the Vietnam War the center of every episode, the series allows history to enter the characters’ lives naturally.

Winnie Cooper, Kevin’s longtime love interest, loses her brother in the war. In the second episode, a graveyard appears while Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” plays in the background, creating one of the show’s most haunting moments.

That balance helps the series remain relatable decades later. The fashions have changed, but Kevin’s heartbreaks, embarrassments and small victories still resemble those experienced by teenagers today.

After finishing the series, I finally understood another reason it felt so personal. The show officially takes place in an ambiguous “Anytown, USA,” a collection of ordinary houses, yards and streets meant to feel familiar to viewers across the country. But its creators drew heavily from their own childhoods.

Co-creator Carol Black grew up in Silver Spring, about four miles from where I experienced my own formative years. The show’s Maryland connection also extends to Daniel Stern, the actor who narrates as the adult Kevin. Stern grew up in my town and graduated from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. His voice, both sardonic and nostalgic, guides viewers through Kevin’s mistakes and realizations.

Black has described the Silver Spring neighborhood of her childhood as an area of quarter-acre lots that initially had few trees. As the trees matured, so did the children living there. She also recalled the enormous Sears at New Hampshire Avenue and Colesville Road, once considered the largest in the country.

That Sears, formerly located at the White Oak Shopping Center, is believed to have inspired the glowing mall where Kevin works flipping burgers and searches for Winnie’s Christmas present.

The fictional Robert F. Kennedy Junior High also closely resembles Francis Scott Key Middle School in Silver Spring. Black, a member of the class of 1976, later graduated from Springbrook High School and met Neal Marlens, who became her husband and the show’s co-creator. Marlens contributed details from his own Long Island childhood, including Kevin’s memorable Jets varsity jacket.

Learning how much of the series grew from places near my home changed the way I thought about coming-of-age stories. Fact and fiction no longer seemed entirely separate. The poignant adolescent narratives I had always romanticized could emerge from ordinary streets and daily routines like my own.

I now imagine myself as the 21st-century protagonist of my own version of “The Wonder Years,” complete with an overdramatic internal monologue. Like Kevin, I move through each disappointment and triumph with little indifference and plenty of unapologetic emotion.

The show never names Kevin’s hometown, but I prefer to believe it was inspired by mine. I once considered this place unremarkable. Perhaps, beneath its tree-lined streets, there was wonder waiting all along.