Get ready, ladies: your day of autonomy is right around the corner.

The one day where the earth revolves around the moon, the sun sets at 8 a.m. and everyone tosses their homework into a woodchipper. That’s right, say goodbye to the world as you know and love it: Feb. 28 is the day when the universe flips over like a giant woman-made sandwich.

It’s time for Sadie Hawkins, America’s favorite pseudo-feminist dance!

So ladies, go arm yourselves with drugstore roses and expired chocolates: on that fated day of Feb. 28, you have exactly 24 hours to ask a boy out. Twenty-four hours. That’s 1440 minutes, 86,400 seconds, 8.46 times 10 to the 23rd power nanoseconds. When the clock strikes 8.47 times 10 to the 23rd power nanoseconds, that’s it!

Want to ask your man to Junior Prom? Forget about it. Want to ask your man to Blue Pearl? Nope. Unless the dance is marked with a Sadie Hawkins insignia, flag, banner or other blatant indication, don’t worry your pretty little head over all that “making decisions/independent will” stuff. Time’s up.

After Sadie’s, you can return to your doe-eyed passive self, mute except for the occasional giggle. That’s exactly what the creator of Sadie’s was attempting: Ol’ Mr. Al Capp, founder of the first Sadie’s in the 1950s, named Sadie Hawkins a day where “chicks” can “wear the pants.”

Wow, what an honor! Pants?! And here I thought I was going to wear this long, flannel Scottish kilt to my deathbed. Thanks, Al Capp. I definitely needed your permission to be a functioning human being with an actual brain and mouth and legs that can, indeed, be fit into two tubular pieces of fabric. Thanks for letting me know that out of 365 days, I can “wear the pants” on exactly one.

Because after Feb. 28, the proverbial ship has sailed. You might as well give up. Return to plaid and pleats. Prepare to roam the halls forever, fluttering your eyelashes and smiling coyly behind your sewing machine until a Manly Man sweeps you off your feet and carries you down the A-building stairwell.

So, Feb. 28: your one opportunity to assert yourself, provided that you don’t launch yourself towards him too enthusiastically. That’s a huge turn-off, along with wearing pants and referring to yourself as a human instead of a “chick.” You don’t want to seem overeager or anything, considering that you’ve never been released from your cage before. It’s not like anybody ever gave us permission to assert ourselves in a relationship without swooning into the nearest locker.

Listen closely, fellow chicks: prepare yourselves now for the most confident day of your life. The best and bravest event your apron-wearing self will ever endure. Go find a pair of pants right now, after you’ve finished reading this, if you can even read at all. (I’m assuming that you have the verbal skills of a six-month-old, because Al Capp has informed us that we are “babes” who need a special day to speak our peanut-sized minds.)

And after all that? No need to worry. America has given we women an even better gift. Sadie Hawkins’ Day, where women (wait for it…) ask men to marry them. Marriage! Can you believe it? As if a man would ever marry a girl who dared to ask him first.