LEAPLINGS - BORN ON THE 29TH OF FEBRUARY

FOR those who were born at the turn of this century, yesterday marked only the SIXTH time they have celebrated their birthdays.

This is despite the fact that they were celebrating their 24th year as human beings.

They are called LEAPLINGS – a rare group of individuals who celebrate their birthday ONCE every FOUR years.

These are the people who were born on February 29.

Those on Facebook probably realised yesterday that they had a lowest number of birthday alerts for their mutual friends.

This special group of individuals include Erasmus Mapukutu, a former intern at ZBC, who has also been a project manager at the Great Zimbabwe Volleyball Programme.

The group also includes Oliver Murwira, a self-employed man, who moved from Bindura to try and strike it big in Harare.

They are not the only ones.

Julia Alsop, a British national, blew out seven candles on her birthday cake yesterday when she turned 28.

When she told people she would be celebrating her seventh birthday yesterday, she says they looked at her as if to say: “’What on Earth are you talking about?’” And then it clicked.

Julia, a medical student from Warwickshire, is a leapling.

She was born on 29 February, an elusive day that appears once every four years in a leap year - so she’s only had seven birthdays on her actual day in her lifetime.

Leaplings are rare.

There is about a one in 1,461 chance of being born on 29 February.

Julia loves that her birthday is different.

In a non-leap year, when she has no official day to celebrate on, she instead plans a week of festivities.

Sometimes the dropdown boxes on online forms will only list 28 days for February, says Jane Atkin, a primary school teacher from London.

She turned 60 yesterday.

“Quite often, I have to put in 28 February, which rankles, because that’s not my date of birth,” she said.

Author, Patience Agbabi, has written a series of children’s fictional books about a young leapling who possesses the special gift of being able to leap through time.

Jane says she contacted Patience on social media ahead of attending a book reading and signing with the author.

“She replied to me,” says Jane, “and said, ‘I’m so excited that you’re coming. Normally when I do a talk about my books, I ask if there are any leaplings, and there never are’.”

When she was younger, Jane’s mother chose to mark her daughter’s non-leap year birthdays on 28 February.

But as she got older, Jane began to also celebrate on 1 March — because “why not?” —