What kid wouldn’t leap at the chance to get out of school so she could spend the day at Disneyland?
That’s how Jenny Williams remembers her childhood in southern California.
Move over, Mickey.
Get out of the way, Goofy.
Just like presidential elections and the Olympics, the Anaheim excursion came around every four years.
Williams, who is now the pastor of Avery United Methodist Church at Cheat Lake, was the Happiest Kid on Earth … in the Happiest Place on Earth.
She owned it, from the spinning teacups to Space Mountain.
“If it was a weekday, my parents would take me and my sister out of school,” she remembered.
“And they never took us outof school, so that was a rare occurrence.”
That’s because hers was a rare birthday.
Williams was a Leap Year baby. She was born Feb. 29 and turns a quadrennial 12 today.
Or — ahem — 48.
“I’m fine with people knowing my age,” she said last week.
“Especially since my kids are now ‘older’ than me.”
Circling the block
The clergywoman is sharing her birthday with 200,000 other “leapers” across the U.S. today.
Globally, 5 million can also claim the day.
That’s according to the numbers research site timeanddate.com, the chroniclers of all things related to this day.
The chances of having Feb. 29 on your birth certificate and driver’s license, the site says, are 1-in-1,461, adding to the uniqueness.
Consider that, while you’re thanking the leapers, in effect, for the accuracy of the calendar on your wall and smartphone.
That’s because it actually takes the Earth just a little longer than 365 days to make the full pass around the sun.
Try five hours more, in the circuit around our solar system’s brightest star.
Plus 48 minutes and 46 seconds.
February was tapped since it’s the shortest month and the easiest to add to, without compromise.
If we didn’t have Leap Year, experts at the site say, the Earth and calendar would continue to wobble out of register.
Omit the quadrennial enhancement, and the calendar will be off 24 days a century from now.
Which wouldn’t be funny, the leapers say — and they know their chronological comedy.
Their parents, spouses and families do, too.
Young, perpetually
That’s why Elda Lough, who turns an annual 88 today, laughs and says she’s the “only 22-year-old that I know of,” living in the retirement community at The Village at Heritage Point.
She isn’t just a Leap Year baby. She’s Leap Year, times two. Her twin brother, Earl, died last February.
“We had a good life growing up,” she said. “And great birthdays.”
That’s why WVU graduate student, Mary Comerci, born Feb. 29, 1996, used to try to trick her classmates on the playground at recess into believing (honest!) she really was 2 .
And why Kristen Harner smiled and looked heavenward as Feb. 28, 2012, ticked down to Feb. 29, 2012 — and her water broke right at midnight.
Her leaper-daughter Aubrey — who gets a hip-hop dance party today with the help of her big brother, Case, 11 — arrived a few hours later that morning to her mother’s maternal and numerological amazement.
“She gets a party every year,” Harner said, “but we try to do something really special every four years.”
Then, there’s Michael Foster, age 1 (in Leap Year years). He arrived via an emergency caesarean section four years ago at J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital.
“He keeps us going,” his mom, Loriann Foster, said. “And he’s celebrating his actual birthday today.”
You can get a party today, too — even you don’t have a Leap Year connection.
The Aull Center on Spruce Street is hosting a “Leap Day Party” from
3-4 p.m. today with cake, stories and the remembrances of Amy Hopkins McClung, who was born 60 years ago on Feb. 29.
“I’m 15,” she said. “How about that?”
Leapin’ logistics
Heather Greenlief, meanwhile, has learned to respect drop-down menus.
She was born Feb. 29, 1992, and if she’s purchasing something online, or registering for something, she always gets kicked out of the process — until she scrolls down to the actual year of her birth.
When she turned 18, her new driver’s license was a point of confusion for the Department of Motor Vehicles.
The “Turns 21 on …” field was blank.
“They all kinda stared at it,” she said.
It was a smooth cruise after it was corrected, though.
Today for her birthday (“7 and 28,” she said), she’s having a quiet dinner with her family.
“I always get asked, ‘When do you celebrate?’ or ‘How old are you really?’ ” she said.
“It’s great for when you get into one of those group discussions where they say, ‘Tell us one fact about yourself.’ ”
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