February the 29th

Today doesn’t exist most years.  It’s Leap Year’s Day.

I dunno if being born on February 29th is annoying or if it makes a person feel special as a ‘leapling’.  I mean, let’s face it, they’ll have only had 10 actual birthdays when they look around, well, 40, if they stay true to their intercalary day of birth.  Or there’s all that choice as to whether to celebrate their birthday on February 28th or March 1st during those non-leap years.  So much hassle.  Yet, sometimes I think it would have been cool to have been born on February 29th.

I do get giddy at pointless things.  Like recently watching an odometer click over to 25,000 miles.  Or noticing it was 2:22 overnight on February 22nd.

My giddiest time is, of course, the run up to the start of a new year.  New Year’s Eve holds great excitement for me, especially compared to, say, Christmas Day.  It is literally the highlight of the year.  Sad, eh?

I guess we all like symmetry.  And of course, years ago when we were far more stupid as a species we used to fear numbers and measurement.  Actually, it wasn’t so long ago.  Despite all our advancements in understanding of the world around us, we made complete anuses of ourselves when we all thought the world would end as the time clicked over from 1999 to 2000 and what people bizarrely mistook for the start of a new millennium (It actually started on January 1st, 2001, not 2000).

Followers of some of the Middle East religions originating from within the various feuding dessert tribes, such as Christianity, have this irrational fear of the number 666 or 13.  And, hey, Fridays.  Add the Friday to the 13th of a month and people fear getting out of bed, such is their stupidity!

But, when it comes to February the 29th, what have people started to imagine it holds?  Well, scariest for free men everywhere is that it is becoming a day upon which a woman can ask him to marry her.  Shudder.  And, tradition holds that his refusal can only be allowed if he buys her 12 pairs of gloves (A glove for each month of the following year that she has to hide her lack of engagement ring).

Now, my thinking is that they should be rubber gloves to enable her to get back in the kitchen where she belongs and to stop having ideas above her station!

Actually, guys, pretend you’ve become Scottish.  Leap years are unlucky in Scotland, and Scottish marriages are doomed.  Or, maybe that’s just something put about by terrified men.

Anyway, Happy Leap Year’s Day everybody.