I was driving along, minding my own business.

I wasn’t looking for trouble, really I wasn’t.

But the site of a small, yellow, diamond-shaped sign with three little words nearly made me run off the road.

Baby on Board.

Innocent-seeming words, perhaps, but frightening in their cuteness to anyone who lived through the 1980s once and would rather run her fingers through some guy’s Jheri curl than live through them again.

But that sickeningly adorable Baby on Board sign was a wakeup call as loud as any Frankie Say Relax T-shirt. It was at that moment I wondered if it was really middle-aged “mommy brain” that made me wear two different earrings to the Chamber of Commerce coffee that morning or if I was actually channeling my inner Cyndi Lauper.

My subconcious was trying to alert me to the meaning behind sights I’d been repressing.

When my teenage daughter came home wearing feather earrings recently I found them more reminiscent of a cool “Half Breed”-era Cher than an androgenous, “Goody Two Shoes” Adam Ant or worse, a hair-metal band fan.

And when I saw girls wearing skin-tight leggings under dresses, I just told myself they must be cold.

At the beach this summer, when Shannon’s hair turned orangish from a run in with Sun In, no warning bells went off.

Even when Shannon walked in from back-to-school shopping and proudly displayed her new jeans, I was able to somehow slip into Sybil mode to block the knowledge they were peg-legged, acid-washed and ripped at both knees.

I hear post traumatic stress can do that to a person.

Now that I know ‘80s fashions really are back, I awake sweating from nightmares in which I am wearing Alexis Carrington shoulder pads, facing a fully padded Brett Favre and telling him, “See, fashion can come out of retirement, too.” And then suddenly, Brett’s wearing a white jacket with the sleeves pushed up over a pink T-shirt and I am leaning over to rub his perfectly trimmed 5-o’clock shadow …

Wait. What was this column about again?

Any-hoo, the gist of things is that it’s time I had The Big Talk with my daughter.