This year Leap Day falls on a Wednesday which happens to also be Kim Moon’s birthday. Moon, sophomore, is the only student at MHS with a leap day birthday. She was born on Feb. 29, 1996.
“Technically I’m 3¾ years old since I turn ‘16’ this year,” Moon said.
Moon was delivered as a scheduled C-section because she was a breech baby Lisa Moon, her mother, said.
“She was riding in me with her head up, which unfortunately is the wrong side up for a normal delivery,” Lisa Moon said. “When the doctor looked at a little card calendar she mistakenly looked at the wrong year when she scheduled the surgery, so she had the date wrong. I didn’t want to wait the extra week, so we stayed with the leap year day.”
When Moon’s parents found out that she was to be delivered on Leap Day, they thought it would be fun because her brother was born on Father’s Day and they were married on New Year’s Eve.
Kim Moon said when she signs up or registers for activities or events, it always poses some difficulties.
“When I turned 15, I wanted to get my permit like every other teenager, but when I went to the DMV they said I had to wait until Mar. 1 to get it because on Feb. 28 when I went initially I wasn’t 15 yet,” Kim Moon said.
Kim Moon said when she registers to vote when she is 18, it will probably be another lengthy process.
“People are usually surprised when I tell them my birthday is on the 29,” Kim Moon said. “They always ask me questions, if I celebrate and what I do since my ‘actual’ birth date only occurs every four years. Usually I celebrate my birthday on the 28 because that way I can still celebrate during the month of February.”
Moon said she usually likes to just hang out with friends or grab dinner with her family on her birthday.
Kim Moon said she didn’t really know what she wanted to get for her birthday this year, so she just asked for a nice digital camera.
“I think that having my birthday on the 29 of February makes me unique,” Kim Moon said. “It’s something that is considered rare because Leap Day only happens once every four years, plus I think it’s cool that I’m the only person at Marquette with a leap day birthday. It sets me apart from other people.”
Invented by Pope Gregory XIII made the first corrections in the calendar for Leap Day in 1582. The Pope wanted to eliminate the slight seasonal drift from when Julius Caesar invented his own leap year calendar, and a number of days were skipped.
“The way leap year works is that three leap days are omitted every 400 years,” Raenell Dawn, cofounder of the Honor Society of Leap Year Day, said. “If the year is divisible by 100, a century year, then it is a Leap Year. Then it is a Leap year if it is divisible by 400. For example, 2000 was a Leap Year, but 1900 was not.”
Dawn was born on Leap Day in 1960.
“There are many hassles with computers not recognizing Feb. 29 as a valid date,” Dawn said. “It’s not cool that some DMV’s make Leap Day babies put a different date on their license.”