The reason I met my husband was because I remembered a friend’s birthday. The moral of the story is: Remember people’s birthdays.

Margulies frames a life-changing event—meeting her future husband—as the unexpected payoff of a small act of social attentiveness. The anecdote elevates “remembering birthdays” from mere etiquette to a practice of maintaining human ties: keeping track of others’ milestones sustains networks in which chance encounters and introductions can occur. The humor of reducing romance to a practical “moral” underscores how contingent relationships can be, and how ordinary habits (reaching out, showing up, acknowledging someone) can create the conditions for extraordinary outcomes. It’s also a gentle argument for generosity and consistency in friendship as a form of social luck-making.