I may not have much influence within my own household, but I do like to think of myself as an influencer on social media.

Just because I think of myself this way doesn’t mean it’s true, mind you, but I like to think of myself this way anyhow.

Also, I’m kind of lazy.

Remember when Tom Sawyer tricked his friends into painting the fence for him?

Being the slothful, self-styled influencer that I am, I thought I could get my Facebook friends to basically write my column for me this week, seeing as I haven’t crawled out of the me-shaped divot in the northeast quadrant of my queen-sized mattress for 1,700 days at least, and as a result I have no “observations or experiences in Cleveland and beyond” to draw upon to fill this space.

So, I put out a pitch: Send me your ideas, for which I will take full credit.

Right away, my cousin Jim came through. “If 2020 has been the worst year of our lifetime, what was the best? A pick-me-up detailing a month-by-month year-in-review of the good-ol’ days would be a delightful read!”

Ooh! That is a good one.

Not much later, Jim’s dad, my Uncle Frank, followed up with some helpful links to websites I could mine for research purposes. (I know I said I wasn’t going to give credit for this inspiration, but Uncle Frank is my godfather and I really don’t want to take any chances getting on the bad side of the Big Guy in the midst of a global pandemic).

Ultimately, I found myself digging through the archives of OnThisDay.com, where you can entertain yourself with the highlights on record for any given day, from 4000 B.C. to today.

Amazing.

Remember how I said I was lazy, though?

Trying to find the “best year” on record—even during my own lifetime—seemed like a whole lot of work.

And yes, I know I’m an influencer, but who am I to declare what is “best”?

So, I took a slightly different tack. I nestled into my mattress groove and pored through the website to find the happiest things listed for each month of July since I’ve been alive. For those keeping track, that’s 1971-2020 and counting!

Anyway, turns out that there were some pretty exciting things happening in past Julys.

In the year of my birth, for example, Apollo 15 astronauts drove around the moon for six and a half hours in an electric car.

Three years later, Cleveland Indians pitcher Dick Bosman threw a no-hitter to take down the Oakland As, 4-0 at Municipal Stadium.

In 1976, the first class of 119 women enrolled at West Point in the Corps of Cadets, and in 1978, nearly 100,000 demonstrators marched on Washington in support of the Equal Rights Amendment.

In the Julys of the 1970s, there was the announcement that EPCOT Center would be coming Walt Disney World, and that original formula Coke was coming back to the shelves.

Heady times indeed.

But there were some troubling things happening during that decade, too, not the least of which were “The Troubles” in Ireland. Apartheid was still in full force in South Africa. Jimmy Hoffa went missing. And Ted Bundy and the Son of Sam were committing their violent one-man crime sprees.

The Julys of the ’80s were about sports and entertainment. In the first year of the decade, the Indians made headlines again, when the team welcomed the biggest MLB crowd in seven years, and 73,096 people watched the Tribe beat the Yankees, 7-0 at home.

In 1983, the site explains, “Mario Bros. is first released by Nintendo in Japan as an arcade game about an Italian-American plumber.” Later in the decade, “Back to the Future” and “Seinfeld” made their debuts.

In July 1991, Donald Trump proposed to Marla Maples with a 7.5-carat diamond ring. In July 1994, the last steel beam was placed in Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

The following July, Art Modell’s rep began secret talks to move the Browns to Baltimore. In 1998, the NBA player lockout that began in July ended up lasting 204 days, shortening the season by 50 games.

In the final July of the ’90s, we said goodbye to John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and his sister-in-law Lauren Bessette, who died when their small plane crashed off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.

In July 2003, SARS was declared "contained" by the World Health Organization (WHO )after affecting 26 countries and resulting in 774 deaths.

In July 2013, #BlackLivesMatter was created in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman on trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin. In July 2015, The Washington Redskins trademark was vacated on the grounds that it may be offensive to Native Americans, and the WHO put the world's Ebola death toll at 11,284.

Facebook had the single worst day of any public company on the stock market in July 2018, losing 19 percent, or $119 billion market value. And on July 1 this year, America confirmed more than 50,000 new COVID-19 cases in one day for the first time.

Wow. This column took a turn.

In Julys past, there were a lot of things happening. Summer Olympics games brought the world together. Professional athletes showed their best in All-Star contests, at the British Open, at Wimbledon, at the FIFA World Cup, and at the Tour de France (except for that seven-year streak when Lance Armstrong doped himself and duped us all).

Space shuttles launched into orbit. Musicians launched stadium tours. Broadway shows opened and closed. There were political conventions and Comic-Cons and lots and lots and lots of hot-air balloon “firsts.”

Julys since 1971 have been marked by earthquakes and riots, hurricanes and floods, landslides and heat waves. They’ve also seen legislation enacted to add seatbelts and airbags to cars and to take cartoon camels out of cigarette ads.

Closer to home, Julys in my lifetime have seen the birth of my sister, Elizabeth, who came into the world on July 4, 1974, when a firecracker scared my mom into labor. We’ve celebrated that momentous occasion with sparklers instead of birthday candles on her cake every year since.

In July 1999, we moved into our house in Cleveland, where we have raised all three of our kids to adulthood.

Julys in their lifetime here have included spending leisurely afternoons splashing in the pool at my best friend Marge’s house three doors down, setting up the picnic table for backyard cookouts with slices of watermelon for dessert, learning to ride bikes in the street, and shooting hoops in the driveway even after the lightning bugs came out.

Julys of years past featured dozens of family vacations with my in-laws at Geneva-on-the-Lake, where we all cruised the boardwalk by night and hung by the water by day. It was there at Allison’s Mini Golf, which proudly proclaims itself “the oldest miniature golf course in the United States in continuous play,” where I sunk my first hole-in-one on a date with my husband.

July 2020 is definitely not the kind of July any of us was expecting. But that doesn’t mean that it’s all bad.

Maybe it’s not the big, marked-down-in-the-annals-of-history-on-a-free-website events that are the most important events of our lifetimes anyway.

Lives are made up of all kinds of moments. And we get to influence the way we spend plenty of them.

In fact, I think I’m going to go slice up some watermelon and invite my quarantined housemates to hang out in the backyard with me and the lightning bugs.

Just as soon as somebody helps me out of this bed.