All through the school year, she saw her classmates get to revel in their one day of celebrity, bringing in sweets and treats and beaming through a chorus of "Happy Birthday to you ...."
But come February, if Haller couldn't point to the calendar and show her strict Catholic school nuns a box marked with the 29th, there would be no such festivities for her. No birth date, nothing to celebrate.
"I truly felt that being born on February 29 was a curse," Haller says.
All grown up and turning 60, Haller today could circle, star and highlight her elusive 29th calendar box for those all-too-literal nuns. But like most of her fellow Leap Year babies, who only get to celebrate their "real" birthdays once every four years, she's come to see the quirky date as more blessing than curse.
"I
learned to work it to my
advantage," says Haller,
a Bloomfield resident
and senior legal
specialist at the
Don't feel sorry for Leapers, as members of this exclusive birthday club like to call themselves. The savvy among them have learned how to have their birthday cake and eat it, too. Whereas most of us only blow out our candles one day of the year, most Leapers stretch the festivities across two. No 29th? Well then they'll take Feb. 28 and March 1.
"I always tell people, congratulate me on either day, and I'll take it," says Jean Munson, of Farmington. By our math, she celebrates 80 years today. But by her own fuzzy Leap math, she's a sprightly 20.
"You know, I always got a kick out of it," Munson says. "I just felt like it made me unique. Everybody remembered my birthday just because it was so unusual."
To this day, come the end of February, Munson can count on a mailbox stuffed with birthday cards from old friends and classmates she hasn't seen in decades, and whose run-of-the-mill birth dates she'd be hard-pressed to reel off.
And every year, there's one special envelope among the stack that Munson can always count on. It's from fellow Leaper Sylvia Cunningham, who today turns 88. Neither can remember how or when they started it. And they can't recall the last time they even spoke or saw one another. But for years they've made certain to exchange birthday greetings, these two women who grew up in the same Plainville neighborhood, tickled as kids to learn they shared the same phantom birthday.
"I remember I used to baby-sit her. And, oh, she was a lovely girl," Cunningham says last week from her home at the Plainville Senior Center, recounting stories from her childhood days on Pearl Street.
But pressed about the advantages and pitfalls of being born on Leap Year Day, Cunningham hasn't too much to say on the subject. "I just take it as a birthday," she says. "I just figure well, that's the birthday I was given. So now I'm 22, and I'll be 23 [next week], God willing."
Again with the fuzzy Leap math.
If Cunningham is nonchalant about her unusual birthday, the person with exuberance to spare on the subject is Raenell Dawn, officer of the Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies and a self-proclaimed Leap Year Day activist.
"I leap,
therefore I am," says
Dawn, a 48-year-old
Leaper from Oregon who
helped found the Honor
Society in 1997
(www.LeapZine.com).
The society claims over 6,000 members in more than 60 countries. Their mission: to connect Leapers worldwide, spread Leap Year awareness (and yes, apparently there are plenty of folks unaware of this 366th day) and to persuade calendar publishers to mark "Leap Year Day" in the box on years that Feb. 29 surfaces.
"We're the only ones who can relate to having a calendar and not having our birth date on it.