So for an underage Leap Year
baby -- sometimes called a "leapling,"
"leapie," or "leaper" -- a
Michigan drivers license will
proclaim
"UNDER 21" in bright red letters
until March 1 of their 21st
year."I
think they just wanted people to
go 365 days, and that
accomplishes that," Woodhams
said.
Computer
databases keeping track of
identifiers such as birthdates
are a permanent part of daily
life -- and a constant hassle
for
some leap year babies.
A fellow
leaper Guttowsky once worked
with at Target legally changed
his birthdate to March 1 because
of the hassle his quadrennial
anniversary caused him, she
said.
"It never
would go into computers," she
said. "He was a manager, and
every time he would go to do
something it would spit it back
out."
Target stores
shift managers every couple
years, forcing him to deal with
another computer system and
another hiccup throughout
his career, Guttowsky said.
"He said it
just got annoying after a
while," she said.
Guttowsky said
she hasn't encountered any
glitches with her birthdate.
"I never
understood why my old boss said
he had to change it, it never
bothered me," she said.
She's heard a
lot of ribbing over her unusual
birthday, though.
"You do get
that constantly," Guttowsky
said. "When my kids were
younger, they'd make a big deal
out of it because they thought
it was funny that I didn't have
a birthday."
Leap Year Day a holiday?
Other leap day
babies try to change the system
instead of changing their
birthdates.
Keizer, Ore., resident Raenell
Dawn Cardile Ochampaugh
co-founded The Honor Society of
Leap Year Day Babies so fellow
leapers
could meet up and share their
experiences and frustrations.
Since 1997, the society has
swelled to more than 6,000
members.
When Ochampaugh moved to Oregon
in 1993 and got her state
drivers license, the clerk told
her she couldn't have Feb. 29 as
her
birthdate because her card would
then set to renew on Feb. 29,
1997 -- a date that didn't
exist.
"I was told she would have to
put the 28th," said Ochampaugh,
who will celebrate her "12th
birthday" this year. "I
explained that the
28th is not when I was born and
that I will not accept that
because it would be incorrect."
After a little negotiating, she
got a drivers license that would
stay valid until 2000 -- a leap
year -- and then it would switch
to a four-
year rotation.
Leapers shouldn't have to deal
with these kind of technical
headaches, Ochampaugh asserts.
She's lobbying for governments
and
calendar printers to recognize
Feb. 29 officially as "Leap Year
Day" or "Leap Day" to raise
public awareness about leap
years.
"Many calendars mark New Year's
Day and Ground Hog Day, but only
a few mark Leap Year Day,"
Ochampaugh said. "We
estimate at least half our
members have had problems with
legal documents that get our
birthday wrong."
21 birthdays = 84 years?
The importance
of the legal definition of a
birthday has an enduring place
in pop culture, courtesy of
English writer and composer
duo W.S. Gilbert and Arthur
Sullivan.
In "The
Pirates of Penzance," an 1879
comedic operetta famous for the
tune "I am the very model of a
modern Major-General," a
leap year-related technicality
made a young man's
apprenticeship over 60 years
longer than he thought it was.
Pirate
apprentice Frederic turns 21
years old and thinks his
contract with the gang of
scoundrels is through -- but the
Pirate King
informs him: "Having been born
in leap year, on the 29th of
February ... though you've lived
twenty-one years, yet, if we go
by
birthdays, you're only five and
a little bit over!"
A clause in
the apprenticeship agreement,
indeed, counts birthdays and not
years.
Frederic, who loathes piracy but
is overcome by a profound sense
of duty, rejoins the pirates
convinced that he is bound to
his obligation
until the 21st time he
celebrates his birthday on Feb.
29 -- when he would turn 84
years old.
Guttowsky
doesn't buy the pirates'
argument.
"I have a
birthday every year; I don't
care what you say," she said. v
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