Dear February 29th,

Hello! Thanks for gracing us with your presence. But to be honest, I wish you didn’t pick this year to appear. You’re just one more day I have to wait to turn 21, finish this awful semester, etc. I didn’t even really notice you today. When I started researching you though I realized how interesting you are.

For instance, there was a tradition long ago that women were allowed to propose to men during a leap year. Sometimes, it was only one day and thus you were called ‘Bachelor’s Day.’ The best part is men were supposed to pay a penalty if they refused. Imagine that? I wonder how many proposals the King got.

You’re a pretty powerful day. But you also cause some problems. Some states don’t let people put you as their birthday on licenses because you don’t exist in computer systems. If you don’t exist, then that means Walk/Don’t Walk signs weren’t installed in NYC during 1952. Ja Rule was never born. St. Oswald never died.

And since I love math:
You’re most likely to occur on Mondays or Wednesdays. You can occur 15 times on these days, 14 times on Friday or Saturday, 13 times on the other days.

So thanks for stopping by. You keep this world on track.

See you in 4 years,
CMS

p.s. thanks to www.timeanddate.com