Leap year birthday leaves Butcher younger than two of her children
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For Gina Butcher, who was born Feb. 29, 1968, it is technically her ninth birthday, though she cheerfully admits to all her years.
“I am 36 years old,” Butcher said. “But I will actually be nine,” she added with a grin.
With a 10-year-old son, Hunter, and an 11-year-old stepson, Dillon, her unique birthday is a source of fun for both the boys, and will soon be for 5-year-old daughter Haile.
“My sons get a kick out of that, because that makes them a year and two years older than me,” Gina said. “They love to tease me that now they are older than I am.”
Gina says she has gotten used to the teasing over the years, and in fact, she has learned to turn it to her own advantage.
“I think that’s wonderful,” she said. “I’ve made great accomplishments for nine years. Graduated high school and had two children. For nine years, I think that’s a great accomplishment.”
Oddly enough, Gina almost missed out on all the fun.
“I talked to my mother about that just this week,” she said. “I was born at 1:13 a.m. so I just barely made it.”
Though Gina is now quite accustomed to her unusual birthday, many people may wonder why we have leap years at all. Actually, leap years are required so the calendar stays in alignment with the earth’s motion around the sun. In other words, it makes the seasons equal out.
To get a bit more technical, the time between two successive vernal equinoxes is called a tropical year, which is about 365.2422 days long. That’s how long it takes for the earth to make one revolution around the sun. Using a calendar with 365 days results in an error of .2422 days, or around 6 hours, per year.
After 100 years or so, this calendar would wind up being 24 days ahead of the seasons. Obviously not a good thing. By adding a leap year every four years, the difference between the calendar and the seasons can be reduced dramatically and the calendar can follow the seasons more closely.
However, all this mumbo jumbo doesn’t really mean all that much to kids like Rebekah Dorris, who will be 12, well, technically 3 years old today. Rebekah will have to wait four years for their birthday to come up again. And some kids think waiting for Christmas to come around is bad.
Rebekah, the daughter of Richard and Rhonda Dorris, is celebrating her unique birthday with a skate party, and is more than ready.
“I have been waiting a long time for this,” she said. “Finally I am out of my ‘terrible 2s,'” she added, “but now I’m going into my ‘crisis 3s.'”
Rebekah had a feature on her upcoming birthday in the Mini Standard and said she enjoyed the excitement, and that lots of kids and adults mentioned it to her.
Gina says the leap year birthday was something family and friends were quick to take advantage of when she was a kid, giving her a bit of a hard time, though it was all in good fun.
“Even my parents would tease, ‘Well, we’re going to get out of buying birthday presents this year, because you don’t have a birthday,” she recalls.
But Gina said she was never really denied.
“We celebrated on February 28,” she said, “and that’s what we do now.”
“We got her a van this year,” daughter Haile piped up.
“Hey, it pays off only having a birthday every four years,” Gina said with a laugh. “Yes, my husband bought me a van this year for my birthday. Little early present. So I don’t expect to get anything for the next four years now.”
But truth be told, she probably will get something next year since, really, who could be mean enough to make her wait all the way till she’s 10 before she gets another birthday present?