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To mark The Times’s 175th birthday, Times editors asked writers to reflect on — and imagine a little bit about — the newspaper’s front page on the day they were born. This is the first in a series. Look up your own birthday page here.

It was a mild Tuesday in Manhattan. On May 13, 1986, the trains spit out throngs onto Wall Street, and while their suits were gray and rumpled, the men had a spring in their step: that fresh itch that accompanies skirts getting shorter, women revealing the dimpled flesh of their thighs as they arrange themselves on the subway seats. Many of the gentlemen, stopping for their daily newspapers, smiled and said, “Keep the change” — pennies, really, but it felt like largess to them. A spirit........

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