Family has a way of reminding you of your age, and I got a good dose of that recently when my younger sister and brother, their children and I accompanied our mother for a weekend to her cabin in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.

The moment my 12-year-old niece spotted me, she asked me if I was “still wearing those” blue flip-flops. I had bought those flip-flops during a trip to Florida last year after that same niece gave me grief for the tattered yellow ones I was wearing.

Since the blue ones were slightly less than a year old, I crazily thought they were still new. Surely, I could get another 10 years’ worth of wear out of them.

A little later in the weekend, one of my nephews asked me “if I was 50 yet.” Not yet, I muttered, though the time is growing shorter and shorter.

At some point, my brother brought up the pairs of bright orange and bright lime green socks I used to wear. I wanted to remind him that it was just a part of my Fluorescent Period, but I didn’t figure that would wash. Truth be told, I think I just wore them around the house and never let them see the outside where they might have embarrassed me.

Finally, the niece with the sharp tongue poked me lightly in my abdomen and asked “if I had a six-pack.” Wanting to believe she really thought I might, since my tummy is smaller than her dad’s (though not significantly), I briefly beamed, then came to my senses.

“I think it’s more like a 12-pack or a case,” I said.

The weekend also featured games of four-square, jump rope and hot box, but some of these didn’t go like I remembered.

Four-square, formerly a simple game played with a large rubber ball which was alternately bounced in the square of each opponent, is apparently now played with the simplicity of set-up instructions for a home theater system. Each “king” sets his own rules with conditions such as “gotcha,” “double taps” and “spinners.”

Jump rope can be done as someone rides a bicycle through one circular rotation. Who knew?

And hot box used to be played effortlessly for hours — without the resulting sore arms from throwing and burning thighs from running.

Fortunately, I could take refuge from these family brutes with my own paean to the past. At night, I could relive my mid to late teens by listening to my downloaded episodes of “CBS Radio Mystery Theater” on the MP3 player my wife gave me for our anniversary.

“CBS Radio Mystery Theater,” which aired 1,399 original episodes between 1974 and 1982, was a throwback to the radio dramas of the 1930s and 1940s.

I used to listen to the one-hour (including commercials and news breaks) broadcasts on KMOX, a strong A.M. station out of St. Louis. They would come on at midnight, or whenever St. Louis Cardinals baseball games ended.

My black, 6-inch square radio sat on the window sill just above my bed, its antenna strategically turned to get the best signal from Missouri. Misery was when the signal faded out just as the drama was coming to a climax.

Each episode began with the slow opening of a creaking door. That was followed by the voice of actor E.G. Marshall’s forbidding, “Come in ... welcome. ... I’m E.G. Marshall.” He then introduced the show, which was broken into three segments, for which he intoned brief lead-ins.

The shows, which were created by Hyman Brown (whose work on such radio shows as “Inner Sanctum Mysteries” dated to the 1930s), starred prominent actors such as Agnes Moorehead, Margaret Hamilton (the wicked witch in “The Wizard of Oz”), Mercedes McCambridge, Morgan Fairchild and Tammy Grimes.

My favorite actor was Fred Gwynne, who had previously played Herman Munster on “The Munsters.”

Each episode closed with the host saying, “This is E.G. Marshall inviting you to return to our mystery theater for another adventure in the macabre. Until next time ... pleasant? ... dreams?” Then the door, as it opened, would creak shut, followed by haunting theme music.

It’s nice to know that even if my body is no longer 16 and my couture is not pleasing to the generation below me, I can still relive those days with a device as current as an MP3 player.