Dean's plans to ask Keisa to the Valentine's Day Dance are foiled when another boy asks her out first. Bill and Lillian make Kim sign up for a Big Sister program to have extracurricular activities for her college applications.
A coming of age story set in the late 1960s that takes a nostalgic look at a black middle-class family in Montgomery, Alabama through the point-of-view of imaginative 12 year-old Dean. With the wisdom of his adult years, Dean's hopeful and humorous recollections show how his family found their "wonder years" in a turbulent time.