On Saturday, August 9, 1980, Jimmy Carter was president. Elvis had been dead for (almost) three years. There was no such thing as the World Wide Web. Eric Clapton had been married to Pattie “Layla” Boyd for a year. It was the 35^th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear attack on Nagasaki, Japan, and the 6^th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation. The constitution of Belgium was officially revised. Iraq was preparing to invade Iran in a month. The top-grossing movie worldwide was The Empire Strikes Back, and the Number One song on the American Top 40 chart was Olivia Newton-John’s “Magic” from the Xanadu soundtrack. (Clapton’s “Tulsa Time” b/w “Cocaine” was Number 30.) The Orioles beat the Yankees, in Yankee Stadium, 4-2. At Kirtland AFB in New Mexico, several security guards saw a bright, disk-shaped UFO descend into a restricted area.

And in Lawrence, Kansas, 20-year-old Barbara Eggleston married 22-year-old Bradley Denton. God only knows what she was thinking.

(Actually, Barb was probably thinking she was lucky that both she and her roommate from Peru knew how to sew . . . because, that morning, she had discovered that her dress was too long, and Brad had discovered that his rented tuxedo pants had been hemmed up too short. I mean, like, Dorf short. Someone at the rental place was having some fun.)

So, what do you do for a 27^th anniversary?

Well, as Barb points out, the traditional 1^st Wedding Anniversary gift is “Paper” . . . the 5^th is “Wood” . . . the 10^th is “Tin” . . . the 20^th is “China” . . . the 25^th is “Silver” . . .

And this week, we have discovered that the traditional 27^th Wedding Anniversary gift, apparently, is “Heat Pump.”

Who knew?