My fourth grade teacher took
great joy announcing that her birthday was that Leap Day. She was 12 to our
nine and ten. She giggled, mistaking our
faces for amazement. We knew our times
tables. We were shocked. She looked much
older than 48.
While student teaching in an area
high school, I met quadruplet boys who were used to being the center of attention. They proudly announced their birthday fell on
Leap Day and bragged about being 4-year old sophomores.
They acted like it too.
I love Leap Day. It is nature way
of letting humans know that everything does not fit into neat little calendar
boxes.
One of those boxes is the Gregorian
calendar. To keep up with the natural
rotation of the Earth, it adds one day every four years but it still does not
keep “perfect time,” so it removes a leap day three times every 400 years. Confusing? Try this: other calendars keep up with the
“natural” year by adding a month every four years. To do
this, they have to rearrange the other months. It must wreak havoc on birthdays
and anniversaries.
Some cultures consider a Leap
Year unlucky, so few marriages or financial transactions are planned in those
years. Since no one wants to be astronomically out of sync, children born in
these countries on Leap Days are considered legally born on the next calendar
day.
Come to think of it, this Leap
Day whammy may be why my 4th grade teacher looked older than her age
or why those high school quads were more annoying than cute.
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