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On my birthday last fall, my husband and kids gave me Trivial Pursuit Totally '80s Edition.

Our family enjoys playing board games. Since we enjoyed his very old original edition of Trivial Pursuit, bought in the mid-'80s, he figured we might enjoy playing this special edition. The two of us, after all, lived the era.

My husband also picked out this particular gift knowing that we probably wouldn't have too many years left with our kids to stay up until 2 a.m. playing board games.

I had been looking at the game as a possible gift for him when he beat me to the punch.

Now that it was in our house, we could find out how well we remembered the '80s.

I opened up the game box and found these really adorable game pieces - an old-school computer, a Trapper Keeper, a CD and Tender Heart Care Bear. Each represented part of what made the 1980s special.

In this process, I had to explain to my teenage son and daughter exactly why the Mead Trapper Keeper Notebook was so special as to gain a spot as a 1980s icon among the other three since all they saw was a notebook.

The questions about the 1980s were good. Some answers came easily and some were obscure. For others, my husband and I just looked at one another and shrugged, joking that maybe we really didn't live that period.

There were questions about popular music, box-office hits, television shows and politics of the 1980s, sports and the wall in Germany coming down.

Our kids happily were able to answer a few of the questions. Some they answered by luck, others they answered because they had heard us talk about that particular topic at some point.

Still other questions they were able to answer because they had read about it in their history books.

My game piece, Tender Heart Bear, helped me win the game. Perhaps I was paying attention during the 1980s after all.

It baffles me that the 1980s are now a part of history. I'd like to still believe I am that 20-year old at a Journey concert in the Greensboro Coliseum with my fiancé.

It amazes me that a period of time that I lived through is now looked at in retrospective so fondly that there is a game.

Nothing brings you back to reality faster than hearing the songs you enjoyed as a teenager being played on Muzak.

There seems to be a recent fascination with the 1980s. I remember last year standing in line at the grocery store listening to the cashier and the woman helping her, both much younger than I, say they wished that they had been born early enough to remember the 1980s because that's when all the good movies came out.

I smiled, amused these young girls wanted to be my age.

Icons related to the 1980s have slowly found their way into the stores again.

One could relive their glory days by buying a button pocketbook, a Rubik's Cube or bundle pack of movies by John Hughes. You could buy the latest twist on old favorite outfits and dance to the tunes you remember because the mainstream stations are playing songs from the 1980s once more.

Rock bands I enjoyed in my late teens and early adulthood have reemerged, releasing new CDs and touring again.

I've heard that some schools observe an '80s day as we observed a '50s day as a part of Spirit Week once a year.

Perhaps all of this fascination with the 1980s introduces a new generation to what those of us who were teens and young adults in the 1980s already knew.

The 1980s were unique and fun.

Or perhaps all of this retro vintage fascination reminds us of Solomon's wisdom from Ecclesiastes: What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

Linda Vestal is a wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend living in Gibsonville. Contact her with comments or story ideas at lindavestal@triad.rr.com.