Born in 1978

If you were born in 1978, you arrived in the year the country was trying very hard to have a good time despite everything. Grease was number one at the box office for months, Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta spinning the country back to an idealized 1958 that never quite existed. The Village People's "YMCA" was in every bar and at every wedding, and even the people who didn't know what it was about were dancing to it.

The Camp David Accords brought Begin and Sadat and Carter together for what felt like a genuine miracle of diplomacy—peace between Egypt and Israel, the president sleeping four hours a night for thirteen days to make it happen. The Jonestown massacre in November—nine hundred people dead in the Guyana jungle—was the kind of horror that didn't fit into any existing American framework. Garfield the cat debuted in newspaper comics.

The first test-tube baby was born in England. Legionnaire's disease and toxic shock syndrome were new medical phrases. The mood ring had faded but the lava lamp was back.

The Sony Walkman was a year away, but the cassette tape was already changing how people carried music. Dallas and Three's Company and Mork and Mindy were on television. The country was full, comfortable, and vaguely uneasy, which is perhaps the definition of the late seventies in a phrase.