Totally awesome, to-the-max 80's

A song usually does it. Maybe it's something by Culture Club or Duran Duran or The Pointer Sisters.

Just like that, you're back at that house party, sporting a giant hair bow and plastic neon bracelets. You're flirting with a totally awesome boy who's desperately trying to do the moonwalk. You're wondering if a DeLorean really could take you "Back to the Future."

Or some semblance of that scenario.

Welcome the birth of 1980s nostalgia, a cultural trend linked to '80s teens entering their 30s. Dr. Peter Hirschburg, sociology professor at Southeast Missouri State University, said nostalgia runs in 20-year cycles.

"You like the music you controlled," he said. "When people are in their 20s, they're getting settled, finding their first jobs, still immature, not stopping to think back yet. They don't get nostalgic until they hit their 30's, and then they miss the music they liked, the TV shows they liked."

That probably why shows such as VH1's "I Love the 80s" are developing a devoted following, and KGKS-FM calls "Wayback Playback Weekend," where DJs play '80s music from Friday night until midnight Sunday, a hit.

But what was great about the '80s is in the eye of the beholder, so several Southeast Missouri residents in their late 20s and early 30s let us know how they saw the decade.

DUKES OF HAZZARD

The 1980s for Cheryl Klueppel were about the adventures Bo, Luke, Daisy and Uncle Jesse Duke had in Hazzard County running from Sheriff Rosco P. Coltraine and Boss Hogg. Apparently, it beats all you ever saw, they'd been in trouble with the law since they day they were born.

"They were just so cute! My favorite was Bo. They had me watching every Friday," said Klueppel of Cape Girardeau.

"The Dukes of Hazzard" aired from 1978 to 1985 and was consistently a top 20 program from 1980 to 1983. The program starred John Schneider and Tom Wopat and even spurred its own fashion trend: the short demim shorts worn by Daisy.

HAIR ROCK/POISON

Jeff Jameson's job puts him more in touch with '80s nostalgia than most people. He hosts the lunchtime '80s request radio show on KGKS in Cape Girardeau. Callers from their teens to their 50s ask for the infectious pop, new wave and hair rock that defined the era.

But for him, the music catapults him back to the opening of the Show Me Center and, later, Poison's concert there in 1988.

"Any time I hear 'Talk Dirty to Me' -- and I love that song -- I remember being up at the Show Me Center, and Poison was up there with Faster Pussycat. I remember waiting outside for Poison to come out and trying to get autographs and guitar picks. I got a guitar pick, but I don't where it's at now."

BREAKDANCING

Carl Wagner remembers the days when spontaneous breakdancing at University Middle School turned any flat, smooth surface into a possible stage.

The trend seems weird now, he said.

"It was the Cold War," he said. "We were all worried about nukes, and there was some guy doing the caterpillar in the hallway at school."

Breakdancing is a mix of fast footwork and acrobatic moves done to fast-paced music. Breakdancing crews waged wars against one another in the height of the 1980s in an effort to see who was better. Dance moves included headspins, handspins, the wave and moonwalking, which, when done correctly, makes it appear your feet are walking forward while your body is moving backward.

'THE GOONIES'

Movies like "Caddyshack" and "Back to the Future" hit the big screen during the 1980s. But Olympia McMackins remembers another hit.

"I loved watching 'The Goonies.' I think it was just the adventure and that this group of kids was going out and doing their own thing," said the Cape Girardeau librarian.

"The Goonies," released in 1985, told the story of a young boy with a wild imagination who wants his father to save their town from developers looking to build a golf course and country club. It starred Josh Brolin, Sean Austin, Martha Plimpton and Corey Feldman.

If fans missed it at the movie theater, "The Goonies" and everything else was available on videotape for the first time in the '80s. The VCR was a new technology then, and video stores rented them if you couldn't afford to buy one -- in 1983 prices ranged from $399 to $800.

RUBIK'S CUBE

When you talk about the 1980s, "who couldn't remember the Rubik's Cube?" photographer Steven Bender asked.

"Stephen Koehler and I sat in Houck Stadium watching the Indians play one evening after I had just gotten the Cube. I couldn't get the thing to work out, so we pulled the center block out and rearranged them as if we had "gotten" the puzzle. All the loose pieces fell through the bleachers onto the floor, and we had to pull the bleachers out after the game to pick up the pieces."

Rubik's Cube was a Hungarian invention that debuted at the Toy Fairs of London, Paris, Nuremberg and New York in 1980. The challenge of matching the colors on each side mesmerized more than 5 million people who had purchased the puzzle by 1981.

MTV

Cape Girardeau hairstylist Race Bradley said the '80s were all about the music videos for him. He'd rush over to fill his sister's requests for baby-sitting because she had cable -- which means access to MTV -- and he didn't.

"MTV -- it really captured me. I remember Modern English and 'I Melt with You.' That's the video that really sucked me in," he said. "Then they made it into a hamburger commercial. That's sacrilegious.

"It was the color and the hairstyles. Fashions changed in school immediately based on videos. Loverboy got me so into bandannas, I had a bandanna on everything. MTV really changed me."

MTV debuted Aug. 1, 1981, with an hour of videos by Pat Benatar, Rod Stewart, The Who, The Pretenders and Styx. By 1987, the network had expanded to include other programming.

MALL BANGS

Alex Yaremko remembers '80s fashion, including what she calls "mall bangs."

"Those were the man-sized palm of bangs that would sit way up high on a woman's head," said Yaremko of Cape Girardeau. "They're called mall bangs. At least that's what we call them now, now that we don't have them."

Yaremko is hard pressed to think of something noteworthy from the '80s that doesn't relate to fashion. And the fashion wasn't good.

"I was not fashionable in the '80s, and I thank myself now," she said.

Among the other fashion notables: wearing more than one pair of socks to match the colors in your shirt, wearing more than one polo and flipping both collars up, tightly rolling up your pants cuffs and wearing the socks over them, thick belts and off-one-shoulder necklines.

RAY BANS OR RISKY BUSINESS

Chris Morrill, of Scott City, an insurance claims representative, doesn't remember much time spent in the '80s when he wasn't wearing sunglasses.

"I took the Corey Hart song, 'Sunglasses at Night,' quite literally. Only Tom Cruise shades, a la 'Risky Business,' would do."

Another trend that might have been inspired by "Risky Business" would be dancing in jockey shorts to Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock & Roll."

Heidi Hall, Laura Johnston and Scott Moyers contributed to this story.