Ladies, you can't have him, he's mine

When my husband wishes me Happy Anniversary in early February every year, he's not marking our wedding day. He is celebrating the day we met.

Honesty (and the love of a good laugh, even at myself) compels me to tell you that the first year after we were married -- the first time he did this, in other words -- I stared at him, dumbfounded. I'd never heard of such a thing. And, ahem, cough, I had to take his word for it. (Blush.) He'd found our meeting so momentous and full of prospects that he'd written it down. I'd, uh, found him intriguing and wonderful and smart and hoped to see him again, preferably just the two of us instead of at another dinner meeting where there were a lot of other people milling about. But I didn't have the wit or foresight (or enough of a romantic bent, apparently) to write it down for future reference. Oops on my part. Hooray for him.

He's never failed to celebrate it since, and I'm charmed and flattered more than I can say.

For you husbands out there who haven't any idea when you met your wife, I guess you're out of luck. (But I'm sure you can figure some way to make up for it...) For you single guys looking forward to matrimony, you might want to plan ahead so you have this option. I won't pretend to speak for all womanhood, but for myself I find the establishment of this tradition one of the nicest things anybody's ever done for me. No question.