I was almost a "leaper." I was born late on February 28, 1956. That was a leap year. Yes, I was sixty yesterday! My memory may be foggy, but I recall as a child, asking my mother why she couldn't have waited a few hours to give birth to me. I guess I thought it would be neat (and certainly unique among my friends) to have been born on February 29. My childhood friends wondered why I'd only want birthday gifts every four years. My mother can show a touch of sarcasm. My recollection of that childhood conversation with my mother is that she replied, "Obviously you've never been pregnant!" I guess that you don't wait to deliver your child, just so he or she can later create a good playground story. 

I have never met anyone with a February 29 birthday. I have met four others who share my birthday. I checked on the internet and found a list of more-or-less famous people who were leapers. Here are some of them: Pope Paul III (1468), General Montcalm (1712), Jimmy Dorsey (1904), Dinah Shore (1916), and Henri – the Pocket Rocket – Richard (1936). People tease leapers that they only have a birthday every four years. 

In reality, it’s just that they have fewer birthday anniversaries than their age in years. They simply transfer the birthday anniversary to either February 28 or March 1. In Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Pirates of Penzance, Frederic the pirate apprentice, discovers that he must serve the pirates until his 21st birthday (when he turns 84 years old), rather than until his 21st year. 

February 29 occurs every four years. The day is added to the calendar as a corrective measure, because the Earth does not orbit around the sun in precisely 365 days. Adding an extra day to the calendar every four years compensates for the fact that a period of 365 days is shorter than a tropical year by almost six hours.

Almost!  Over a period of four centuries, the accumulated error of adding a leap year every four years equals about three extra days. The Gregorian calendar therefore removes three leap days every 400 years. The next year that will happen is 2100. Check out the Wikipedia entry on leap years if you're more interested in the algorithm than I am. 

The rarity of February 29 has led to folk traditions being connected to the day. In Ireland and Britain, it is a tradition that women may propose marriage only in leap years. Fines could be levied if the man refused the proposal. In Finland, the tradition is that if a man refuses a woman's proposal on leap day, he should buy her the fabric for a skirt. In Greece, marriage in a leap year is considered unlucky. In the United States, February 29 is often referred to as Sadie Hawkins Day, once again, a day when a woman proposes to a man. Given the changing reality of contemporary relationships, I'm not sure that those traditions mean a whole lot anymore. 

At any rate, today is an extra day in the year. We all love the extra hour of sleep when the clocks go back an hour. I'm sure we won't do it, but wouldn't it be a treat to make this truly an extra day and do a few things we wouldn't normally do.