My 32-year-old-cousin is 8 years old. Like 5 million other people in the world, he isn’t able to celebrate his actual birthday every year, because his birthday is on a particularly special day, February 29. February 29, also known as Leap Day, appears on the Gregorian Calendar once every four years. According to NASA, the 365-day calendar we use is not an exact measurement of Earth’s one full orbit around the Sun. The Earth actually takes 365 days and 6 hours to fully orbit the Sun. In other words, one whole year is actually 365 days and 6 hours long, or, 365.2422 days long. Instead of making the length of every year a decimal, it was decided to make the length of every year 365 days, and that every 4 years, the 6 hours missed from the 365 days would be made up on one day—February 29.

My cousin Ginno, who is a part of the less-than-0.1-percentage of people in the world born on Leap Day, shared some insight on what it is like being a “leapling”. One common question normal-birthday-people may have for leaplings is when do they celebrate their birthday during a normal 365-day calendar year? While we have a group of leaplings that choose to celebrate their birthday on March 1, we also have people like Ginno, who celebrate their leap birthday on February 28. Ginno explained that “Whenever I have a leap birthday, I always celebrate it on February 28, just so I’ll still be able to celebrate it in February, because, after all, I’m a February baby.” A special perk about having a leap birthday is that leaplings get to choose when they want to celebrate their birthday; and they could even choose to have a two-day celebration if they wanted to! While not being able to celebrate your birthday every year may be odd, Ginno explained that the rarity and uniqueness of a leap birthday should be embraced, “I’ve always felt special and unique about having a leap birthday, because a very small amount of people in the whole world have it. Although I’ve only had 8 real birthdays in my life, I still love being a leapling. The odds of being born on Leap Day is very slim, and I’ve always considered it as a token of luck.  Explaining the history of Leap Day to people is pretty cool, but it’s their reactions to when I tell them I’m 8 years old that I live for.”