It's hip to be square

My nephew, 14 going on 43, walks into my brother's house wearing his collar straight up.

"Dude," I say, cringing as if he'd just blasted a Mag-lite in my face. "Put that thing down."

"Why?" He shrugs his shoulders. "It's cool."

"Not in the eighties it wasn't." And I get the eye-roll which translates to mean the eighteen-eighties. "In the eighties, only the preps dressed like that and it was kind of a joke. Like whale pants and Flock of Seagulls haircuts."

"Whale what?"

As he stared at me wondering if he had been adopted, I started speculating on what other dorky things might come back. I longed to troll over to the high school and see a bunch of cheerleaders in black cat-eye glasses taped in the middle, Famolare wave platforms and gauchos. Football players in flood pants and plaid shirts, unbuttoned to reveal white Fruit of the Looms.

Oh, but life would never be that sweet.

"Some shirts even got 'pop the top' written on 'em," he says.

Now that's cool. But wearing that in my high school probably would have gotten me stuffed inside a gym locker.