Most years, this is the week when Mitchell Abes happily celebrates his birthday.
His mother, Julie?
A little less happy, usually.
“I just get sad when I open a calendar and I have to draw in a ‘29th,’ or I have to write [his birthday] in on March first,” said Julie Abes, who lives in Alpharetta “He can’t wake up most years and have people cheer, ‘It’s your birthday!’ Because it’s really not.”
Born on Feb. 29, 2000, Mitchell has a birthday that officially comes around only once every four years — including Wednesday, his “third” birthday.
Unofficially, that makes the soon-to-be 12-year-old and the estimated 6,999 other Georgians born on a Leap Year Day, um, oddballs.
Oddballs in the nicest sense of the word, of course — “What could a woman like better than to age slowly?” chirped Eleanor Strain, 83, a lifelong Atlantan for whom Wednesday is only her “21st” birthday (and woe to anyone who dares suggest otherwise!)
But oddballs nonetheless. Mitchell Abes found out as much when he tried to provide the information necessary to register for an email account.
“It said ‘birth date not valid,’ ” he said from the car where his mother was driving him to a tutoring session for his upcoming Bar Mitzvah. “I just changed it to the 27th [of February].”
But why should he even have to? That, in essence, is the battle cry of the Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies. Its website, www.leapyearday.com, is filled with fun features, such as a list of famous “leapers” (Dinah Shore, Ja Rule, Superman), a photo gallery of leap-centric tattoos, even musical links (check out 1959’s “Leap Year Cha Cha” at
).
Yet the group’s mission is deadly serious: To advocate for the inclusion of Feb. 29, aka “Leap Year Day,” by name on calendars and in dictionaries. (“Why is Ground Hog Day honored on the calendar and Leap Year Day is not?” society co-founder Peter Brouwer good-naturedly grumbled by phone from Florida.) And to lay out persuasive evidence of the “major invalidation” those born on Feb. 29 frequently suffer, according to co-founder Raenell Dawn.
The website’s tales of confused computers or heartless bureaucrats rejecting Feb. 29 as a legitimate birth date on driver’s licenses, birth certificates, applications for insurance benefits and more are enough to curl one’s hair. Not to mention provoking pity in the rest of us: What must it be like, we wonder, going through life permanently handcuffed to the Rodney Dangerfield of days?
“It’s so different,” said Mitchell Abes. “I feel extra-special.”
“I love it,” agreed Strain, who makes a big to-do about her birthday every four years — then essentially ignores it for the next three. The situation makes for great jokes (“All my grandchildren are older than me,” said the soon-to-be “21”-year-old) that everyone is in on. “I think the fun is that people are fun about my over-enthusiasm.”
In fact, the “overenthusiasm” surrounding Feb. 29 appears to be spreading. Call it the Revenge of the Leap Year Day Babies, the latest example of America never meeting a good idea it couldn’t market, or simply a case of better late than never — whatever the explanation, the day that for so long couldn’t get any respect can’t beat it off with a stick this year.
The Loews Atlanta Hotel is offering a “Forever Young” deal for Leap Year Day babies Wednesday. Anyone with a valid driver’s license showing Feb. 29 as their birth date gets a complimentary specialty cocktail in the hotel’s Bar eleven.
At Serpas True Food in the Old Fourth Ward, anyone born on any day can take the leap Wednesday and get a free dessert or appetizer with the order of two entrees. And the Melting Pot is offering a four course chocolate-infused menu for $44.44 per person at its four metro Atlanta locations (because Leap Year Day occurs once every four years, get it?).
On a less commercial note, Wednesday is the official launch date for the Great American Bake Sale. This is the ninth year that Share Our Strength — the nation’s leading nonprofit working to end childhood hunger — has organized the campaign in which individuals and groups sign up to host fundraising bake sales in their communities. But it’s the first time they’re using the notion of Feb. 29 — i.e., an “extra” day in the year — to bring something extra to the effort, said Great American Bake Sale national director Amy Crowell, who’s based in Atlanta.
“We have a Facebook page and someone posted on it the idea of giving that extra day to do public service,” said Crowell, who, in another bake sale first, is organizing a Feb. 29 Tweet-athon with suggested messages like “Make leap day count! Pre-heat those ovens and sign up for the 2012 Great American Bake Sale today!”
The campaign usually kicks off March 1. But ...“I think we’ll get a lot more attention around it this way,” Crowell said.
Speaking of attention, Strain doesn’t want a lot of it this year. She jokes about behaving more like an “adult” now that she’s turning 21; in truth, her last Feb. 29 birthday four years ago was a non-stop blowout of activities marking the fact that she was turning 80 in the more mundane 365-day-a-year world.
Indeed, “all” that the dedicated volunteer for the Atlanta Opera believes she has planned for this Wednesday is a stint as a “light walker”: For several hours she’ll stand front and center on stage at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre while the lighting director sets the cues for the Opera’s production of “The Golden Ticket” that premieres four days later.
Wait ... Stints in the spotlight, free cocktails, dedicated Tweet-athons? Is it possible our pity’s been misplaced all this time?
“There’s a psychological aspect to being born on Leap Year Day that makes you feel younger, more special,” admitted the Honor Society’s Brouwer, who managed to retire happily in his 40s and now splits his time between Florida and an idyllic-sounding village on Vancouver Island. “We just don’t celebrate as many birthdays.”
And when they do, boy how they celebrate. Soon after she gave birth to Mitchell on Feb. 29, 2000, Julie Abes recalled, “My husband said, ‘That kid gets the biggest party every four years.’ At [age] 4, we literally had a carnival and invited everyone we knew. On his eighth birthday, we had a bunch of kids in a box at a Hawks game and Harry the Hawk came to visit.”
This year, there’ll be another “biggest party” all right — just not Wednesday. A few months from now, the Abes will take over their son’s summer camp for an entire weekend and celebrate his combined Bar Mitzvah/“third birthday.”
So the boy whose birthday celebration has to be moved around most years is doing it by choice this year?
Julie Abes can appreciate the irony. By now, too, she can also appreciate the benefits of her son’s “extra-special” birth date.
“You’re always looking forward to it,” she said with a laugh. “It never gets old.”
