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MIKE MOORE: Rare party for
those who leapt
BY MIKE MOORE
Journal Times
Thursday, February 28, 2008
11:49 PM CST
Had he forgotten his
anniversary the past three
years, technically Greg
Schick would’ve been
covered.
His wife, Kathy, and he were
married on Feb. 29, 2004,
making today their first
official anniversary. He’s
always done his husbandly
duty anyway.
“I still give her a card as
close to the date as
possible,” he said.
Something about their
relationship cried out for a
unique wedding date. Maybe
it’s genetic, knowing his
grandmother got hitched on
Christmas Eve when she lived
in Russia.
As the couple zeroed in on
February, they searched for
a day to make it memorable.
Valentine’s Day? Nah, too
overdone. Groundhog Day? Too
soon.
With their kids as
witnesses, they stood in
their living room and tied
the knot on a holiday the
calendar doesn’t even
acknowledge. It gives them a
chuckle, not that they
typically need an excuse to
laugh.
Today, for a small segment
of the population, TGIF is
overshadowed by TGILD —
Thank God It’s Leap Day.
“We joke about
having to put a notch up on the wall every
four years,” Greg said.
Leap Day babies,
on the other hand, have zero say in the
matter. They pop out on whichever date
gravity and the doctor tell them.
Becca McCray
digs being one. She turns 24 today, or 6 if
you take things literally. She handles the
jokes about being big for her age in stride.
“I’m very good
at giving it, too, so you have to be able to
take it back,” she said.
The 2002
graduate of St. Catherine’s High now soaks
in the rays from Boca Raton, Fla., where
she’s closing in on a master’s degree. When
we talked, she planned to have her mom and
maternal grandmother down for the big
weekend. Apparently they’re not sticklers to
make her go four years without that homemade
chocolate cake.
For some reason,
friends typically call her on the 28th,
family on the 1st of March. Not everyone is
fully briefed on the mystery of Leap Year,
she’s noticed. Some think it comes every two
years, others every six.
Just
more ammo for the Honor Society of Leap Year
Day Babies. The Internet club for those with
Feb. 29 birthdays wants Congress to declare
it an official holiday. That and to point
out that, unlike some neurotic critter’s
shadow, Leap Day actually does affect the
seasons.
People can
adapt. Many computers can’t, which is Leap
Day babies’ biggest beef.
“We
estimate at least half our members have had
problems with legal documents, such as a
driver’s license, that gets our birthday
wrong,” Honor Society co-founder Raenell
Dawn wrote in a press release.
Those of us born
on one of the other 365 days never notice
that kind of stuff. From the personal
stories the Leap Day babies submitted, I can
tell they’re able to laugh about most of it.
“I
could have beat the draft in 1942 because I
had only four birthdays, and the draft said
that you had to register on your 18th
birthday,” one guy wrote on the group’s Web
site,
http://www.leapyearday.com. “But I
know how the government works, they would be
knocking at my door in 1996 saying ‘we want
you now!’ So I enlisted.”
Clearly, there’s
a man with wisdom beyond his age.
Mike Moore can
be reached at (262) 631-1724 or
mike.moore@lee.net
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