It’s common for me to have snippets of songs caught in my head for days at a time. Some are pleasant enough (“Blackbird singing in the dead of night …”) while others frazzle the nerves like fingernails on a blackboard (“Yummy, yummy, yummy, I got love in my tummy :”)

This week, thanks to a certain movie that opened Tuesday, I have been tortured by this little ditty: “Transformers. More than meets the eye. Transformers. Robots in disguise …”

It’s driving me to drink.

If you had a young son and at least one television in the 1980s, you probably know what I’m talking about. “Transformers” was a cartoon – and an obligatory line of must-have merchandise – depicting the long-standing feud between the Autobots and Decepticons, gigantic cars that changed to robots and back again. It was one of my son’s many pop-culture obsessions, along with He-Man, Voltron, Alf, GI Joe and Ghostbusters (Careful! Don’t get THAT song stuck in your head). I don’t remember much about the actual show, but a “Transformers” commercial aired every 13 seconds in 1986, prompting my son (and me) to chime in like singing Pavlov’s dogs.

Meanwhile, my daughter was crooning different tunes with decidedly pink underscoring: “Jem is truly outrageous. Truly, truly, truly outrageous,” or “Barbie and the Rockers : dressed so cool blah-blah-blah-blah-blah wanna dance!” The lyrics were sketchy, but that didn’t stop me from singing alto to her soprano.

(Believe me, I TRIED to fight gender role stereotyping in my kids, as mandated by child psychologists of the era. I offered my boy a doll to play with. I did! He yanked the head off, jammed it into his sister’s abandoned Tonka truck, and sent it careening down the basement steps.)

Now, “Transformers” is big box office and a bigger problem for me than having an annoying jingle stuck in my brain. I call it “Parental Guilt, Case No. 13,689.”

“Why did you let me sell all my toys?” my 25 year-old son asked accusingly (while being treated to an expensive sushi dinner by his father and me, by the way.) “Those Transformers would be worth something now. And my Voltrons? Do you know how long it took me to collect all five lions? How could you let me give those away?”

Once again, we were forced to revisit one of the darkest, most controversial events of our family’s past: the garage sale of 1995.

That spring, extra cash was scarce, but the attic was overflowing with outgrown clothes, long-forgotten toys and assorted bric-a-brac. We were desperate for a summer vacation and could think of only one way to raise the money.

In a magnanimous gesture, my husband told the kids they could keep whatever money they earned by selling some of their old toys. Within 10 minutes of hearing their dad’s offer, my capitalist 14-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter had filled nine empty boxes with cast-off dolls, action figures, stuffed animals and assorted personal effects. (“No, honey, you can’t sell your retainer.”)

We had the presence of mind to declare a few things off-limits, including the Fisher-Price Little People farm, American Girl dolls and Playskool kitchen. The classics. For future grandkids, we rationalized.

The day of the sale, I watched my children’s faces for signs of remorse as customers eagerly snapped up their possessions. There were none. My son was too far into “Magic: The Gathering” cards; his sister had moved on to Beanie Babies. Even after we returned from our summer vacation – the details of which I have completely forgotten – neither one of them showed the slightest tinge of grief.

Today, our adult children would have you think we sold the farm right out from under them, forfeiting their entire inheritance. I mean, c’mon, it’s not like we were the kind of family that saved the original boxes and kept all of Barbie’s shoes! Our old toys weren’t eBay quality; they were scrap metal!

Well, enough’s enough. I refuse to feel one more pang of guilt because I didn’t have the foresight to know Hollywood would transform every stupid afternoon TV show into a summer blockbuster. Sure, I wish we had kept more stuff around for sentimental reasons, but let’s move on, people!

I heard this week that a “Voltron” movie is slated for 2008. I’m dreading it, and the inevitable rehashing of the whole “how could you?” scenario.

But it won’t drive me to drink. Because, mercifully, Voltron didn’t have a theme song.