You're not going to believe the stuff that you will see here on the 29 day of February 2012. To begin with I have to say that after all the years that I sat there and calculated my chances of making it to the year 2000, it turns out that one of the wonderful things about it was that, when I got there, it was Leap Year. The next "turn of the Century" leap year will not be until 2400. I am quite sure that I will not be around then unless I have come back as a Galapagos Tortoise or something like that. As you can tell by some of my previous notes to you on this blog, I have been a little bit curious about the phenomenon of Leap Year. We somehow get proud of our scientific savvy and we think that all this stuff is here thanks to our advanced astronomical science. Not so. The first leap year was declared sometime back in the 3rd century. So, how's that? Now, I am not going to bore you with a lot of stuff that you don't really care about. I'll only bore you with a little bit of such stuff. First, for example is the reason why in French the word for Leap Year is "Annee Bissextile." [No, that has nothing to do with that!] It comes from the fact that in the early centuries AD, the Roman way of counting days was used. Stuff like Kalends and Ides was the rule. Since the first "Leap Day" was inserted ["intercalated] between the sixth day of the Kalends of February and the first day of the Ides, it was called the Annus Bissextilus, thus, all about six and not s.x, and thus also, the French and other languages sticking with the term written above. Now, ain't that cool?
Now there is something else that enters my mind here that makes me happy that our Hapa Haole younger son was born on February 28 and not the 29. It is the question of when we would have been able to celebrate his legal 21st birthday. So, what is the legal substitute for February 29th in the United States for a leapling's birthday in a common year? To put it another way, if you were born on 2/29/xxxx, on what day would you be legally able to imbibe alcohol in public? Would it be February 28 or would it be March 1? I admit that after much research, I haven't found the answer to the question. So, if your are a leapling, for most purposes you will be able to get along easily. However, when your father takes you out for your midnight swig when you turn 21, you may have to wrangle the bartender if you try it in February 28 of a common year. If, by happenstance, your father made a deal with you to do that in your 21st birthday, you may have to wrangle St. Peter at the Golden gate to let the old man out.
So, I hope that you have a happy intercalary day. I'm sure that I will because I know what intercalary means.
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