This morning as I sat at my desk, I momentarily panicked because I couldn’t remember today’s date and I knew that my anniversary was either today or tomorrow. I quickly double-clicked on my desktop’s calendar icon and thankfully, it’s tomorrow and luckily I still have time to get a card this afternoon and perhaps a bottle of bubbly and still look like a hero tomorrow. Before you ladies crucify me though, I had already booked a night away next weekend, which includes in-room champagne, chocolate covered strawberries, breakfast and a 50-minute massage. So, it’s not like I totally forgot about our anniversary. I guess in my mind I’d already “taken care of it” so I had just let it fall to the back on my “most important things to focus on this week” list.

But then my mind played a trick on me and I wondered if my anniversary was really tomorrow (the 6th) or today (the 5th) and perhaps I was remembering the date wrong. And what if  CareerMom, rather than telling me “Happy Anniversary” this morning, was waiting it out to see how long I’d go before remembering it. Kinda like giving me enough rope to hang myself with. Even as I type this, I’m 99% sure we got married on the 6th, but I’m still in 1% panic mode that maybe I’m wrong! This is why men should always get their wedding date engraved on the inside of their wedding band. I didn’t.

But man, I never thought I’d be “that guy.” I remember being single and thinking, “Wow! How could a guy ever forget his anniversary? What a stooge!” And now here I am, airing out my armpits after a ten second, sweaty panic attack over having done just that.

At least I did plan something though, so I’m not coming down too hard on myself. But even still, with all the planning and reminder tools I have at my disposal, why haven’t I set myself a reminder? Before my wife’s birthday I should have a reminder pop up a week prior that says, “Yo dawg! Don’t forget that CareerMom’s birthday is three days before yours.” That works—cuz, you know I’m not going to forget my birthday. Same thing for our anniversary.

But I’ll tell you, before I go judging other men on their forgetfulness, I’ll first stop and remind myself that life is stressful and demanding. Sometimes it’s easy to forget things, but even if/when you do, it doesn’t mean you don’t care.