The other night, I was helping my 18-year-old nephew and a few of his buddies work on a truck in the garage. During a rainstorm, the power was knocked out, so we herded inside.

One of them asked me what I did "back in the day" when this happened. When I mentioned board games, they looked at me as if I had my head sewn to the carpet (Christmas Vacation reference). Luckily, in the closet atop a shelf, I had a deluxe version of Risk, so I grabbed it.

The guys, all recent high school grads, were actually intrigued, so we had a go of it. Even when the power came back on less than an hour later, we continued and played the contest to its conclusion, some almost three hours after we started... and we all had a blast, so much so that when I told them, "when we really decided to get serious about it, we played double-board Risk," to which one of them responded, "next time it rains, you buy the pizza, we'll be here."

Which, of course, brings me (finally) to my question: What were the board games you enjoyed as a kid (apologies if this is not appropriate subject matter, but the wait and buildup to the 2015 season is driving me to distraction!)?

My list:

* Risk

* Monopoly

* Stratego

* All-Star Baseball (not really a board game, but this was the one with the cardboard circles for each hitter with a spinner used to determine the outcome. I used to make my own circles, with the home run space for the likes of Aaron, Mays, etc. taking up about 90 percent of the space)

* Stratomatic baseball

* NFL Quarterback

* Battleship

* Electric football (inevitably, the motor would burn out, forcing us to tap on the tin with our fingers. Did anyone ever complete a pass with the awful triple-threat QB/kicker/punter?)