63, going on 16: Leap Day 'leapers' jump to it defending their rare birthdates
Credit to Author: Gordon McIntyre| Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2020 14:00:30 +0000
Imagine you’re a kid again, your mom marks your’s and your siblings’ birthdays on the calendar, except three-quarters of the time your name goes into an empty box.
How come your name isn’t in a box with a number? How come most of the time there’s no 29 on the calendar when it’s flipped over to February?
And, come to think of it, why is Groundhog Day stamped on Feb. 2 on your wall calendar, Valentine’s Day on Feb. 14, but Leap Day isn’t when it appears every four years on Feb. 29?
“I’ve heard people say it’s not even a real date, but it’s the most important date on the calendar,” said Raenell Dawn, co-founder of Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies. “It’s the date that keeps the calendar in line with the seasons.”
Leap Year is necessary because the Earth takes 365-and-a-quarter days to circle the sun; if there wasn’t a Leap Day every four years, eventually farmers would be planting their crops in January and Christmas would occur in summer because the months wouldn’t keep up with the Earth’s solar orbits.
But those born on Feb. 29 face many obstacles.
Leap Day advocates have made some strides — online autofill forms are beginning to accept Feb. 29 as a birthdate now, for instance; hospitals are (slightly) less likely to change a baby’s birthdate from Feb. 29 to March 1 or Feb. 28.
But people still get accused of having fake ID when they show their driver’s licence to a cop or a bartender, Vancouver’s Peter Brouwer, the other co-founder of Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies, said.
“It’s amazing how many people don’t think about Feb. 29, it’s amazing how many people don’t know about Feb. 29,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons we tell our story every leap year.”
Brouwer, who will celebrate his 16th birthdate on Saturday as he turns 64 (sometimes written as 16@64) joined forces with Dawn in 1997 and the society now has more than 11,000 members worldwide. The society’s Facebook page has another few thousand followers.
The group’s goals are to stop hospitals from changing the date on birth certificates, get the words Leap Year Day (the preferred wording of “Leapies”) capitalized in dictionaries and onto calendars, and get worldwide technology “leapified.”
There are Leap Year Day events happening around the globe: In Africa and Australia, India and Israel, Montenegro and Morocco, Cyprus and Cuba, and across Canada and the U.S.
They include Caribbean and Oceania cruises, free mountain cableway rides, house parties, free skiing in California, a beer expo in Michigan, album release party in New York, and all sorts of other parties and bashes.
Brouwer will celebrate with a couple of friends who are coming to visit, from San Francisco and Gabriola Island. He said he can’t remember what he did to celebrate turning 63 last year, but he sure remembers his 15th birthdate celebration four years ago in San Diego.
“The seasons arrive at the same time of year every year just because of Feb. 29,” Brouwer said. “So we take it seriously.
“But we also promote the idea that it’s your extra day, too. Do something special with it.”
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