Kicker: Celebrating leaplings

REANELL DAWN: Welcome to Leap Central…

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: That’s Raenell Dawn, and today is her 16th birthday.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Wait, she doesn’t sound like a teenager.

BROWN: That’s because she’s a leap day baby! Dawn’s lived 64 years, but goes four years between birthdays.

Back when she was seven-leap-years-old, Dawn started a birthday club for people born on leap day, but it’s not all party hats and cake.

She spoke with The Today Show around Leap Day 2020:

DAWN: For some reason programming computers, the programmers forgot about leap day and so oftentimes, February 29 isn’t even an option.

Leap day babies face tricky problems with birth certificates, birthday coupons, and so forth, but Dawn says she’s happy to be part of it.

DAWN: I believe it’s the most important date on the calendar because it keeps the calendar in line with the seasons.

Without leap day, we’d be about 25 days off every 100 years… and eventually, Christmas would end up in the summer.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

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