Pop Quiz

Four years before I met her I met one of my best friends. This friend is very outgoing, very smart, and also happens to be a very attractive girl. Our friendship, however, has always been just that: friendship. We’re not each other’s type at all and the idea of dating each other is so incestuous that even writing these words feels uncomfortable. And yet, all of this is very hard to explain to an insecure teenage girlfriend. We’re talking about birthdays; my friend’s birthday is on the 14th. She asks me when her own birthday is.

“Your birthday is on the 15th,” I tell her. It’s an interesting coincidence but it’s true. She gives me a stern look and plainly asks me a question.

“Are you sure that’s not your friend’s birthday?”

Mayday. Panic. Did I just mix up my girlfriend’s birthday with the birthday of my friend that makes her jealous? Calendar pages start flipping in my mind. I could’ve sworn her birthday was the 15th. Is hers actually the 14th? Have I been living a lie? Is this like how I could have sworn my dad was born on the 21st but then suddenly one year it was the 20th and everyone told me that’s just how it always was? Where does this land between “Forgetting an anniversary” and “Calling out the wrong name in bed” on the relationship fuck-up scale? Oh god, I haven’t said anything in too long of a time. I should say something.

“Uh… yeah.” I give her a confused look that I just know betrays my panic. “I’m pretty sure she’s the 14th.” Curse my habit of using non-committal language. “You’re the 15th.”

She scans my eyes, her stern expression never wavering.

“Okay.” She says that word in a way that tells me I have either passed or failed a secret test, the results of which she’s filed away.

It’s an agonizing wait until I can find out on my own that I was right the whole time, she was born on the 15th. The damage is done, though, and for the next seven years the self-doubt will lead to me actually confusing the two birthdays.