I was throwing around in my head the idea of a short story about people who were born on days or at times that are in some way rare.

The ‘Leap Day Conundrum’ – for lack of a better term – is something people born on February 29th deal with. It’s not that big of a deal really in a practical sense. Depending on where in the world you live, your legal birthday is either the 28th or March 1st on the other years. I doubt people born on Leap Day think much about it except when people act like they had a revelation and ask if you realized you were a Leap Baby. I guess it would put a damper on things when you turned 21 if the bartender decided to turn you down on the 28th.

Perhaps you could develop an interesting story around several people together who were born at unusual times: Leap Day, twins born across the daylight savings time ‘fall back’ hour, or the first baby born in 2000 being the more obvious ones. You could pick some that are less obvious: born on the first day of Hanukkah when it falls in November, on Easter when it falls on the spring equinox, or when Passover and Easter fall on the same day, to bring about some good religious themes. You could also work in people born on infamous days in history: September 11, the invasion of Pearl Harbor, and so on.

Since it only comes every four years (though not always, as you’ll see), let’s go over some fun calendar facts, just because we can.

• Leap years occur every four years except when the year is evenly divisible by 100 (e.g., 1700, 1800, 1900). However, there’s an exception to that rule, too. If the year is divisible by 400, the rule of 100s doesn’t apply. As a result, 2000 was a leap year.
• It is possible to go eight years between leap years. The last time this occurred was between 1896 and 1904. It will occur again between 2096 and 2104.
• Why do we have leap years in the first place? The actual solar year (how long it takes the Earth to go around the sun) is approximately 365 1/4 days, meaning that we get a quarter of a day behind every year. So, leap years help us catch up.
• Why do we skip leap year every 100 years but add it back in every 400? The keyword above is approximately a quarter of a day behind each year. Currently, the solar year is about 11 minutes short of 365 1/4 days. This means we have to throw in another fudge factor every 100 years by taking out a leap year and every 400 years by adding it back in.
• Even all that fudging doesn’t completely solve the problem. There’s enough error left to compound over a long period of time that it’s estimated that in the year 4909 we’ll be a full day off even with all the leap years between now and then. People way too concerned about this are asking for the year 4000 to be designated as a leap year even though it’s divisible by 400. A logical, wait-and-see approach may be merited, both because the solar year will ever so slightly change over time as the orbital speed of the earth slows and the years get a smidge longer and, well, because no one alive right now should really care enough to act on it.

Why do I know all this? Beats me. Sometimes random knowledge interests you at some point and then sticks in your brain.

What does this have to do with writing? Well, they made a movie out of Groundhog Day, and other movies since have been based on the idea. Could be fertile ground here for something!

If you write a novel set at some turn of a century, you can thank me later for helping you know whether that year was a leap year.

I also think it was part of the solution of an Encyclopedia Brown story I read once.

Again, here’s another marginally writing-oriented post. Writers do need to exercise their brains a little outside the written word on occasion. Besides, we’re kindred spirits with visual artists.

The “Big Spanish Castle” illusion will cause you to have a “yeah, right” moment when you read the instructions. Just do it. You won’t believe it otherwise. It freaked me out the first time I did it.

The theory behind this is based on the concept of afterimage. You can find a neat experiment and explanation of this here.

The guy who created the castle illusion also includes a helpful tutorial on how to make your own from any image (look below the image on his page).

What I found interesting about both of these was that after going through the experiments once and then going back and doing them again later, I could sense a moment when what I was staring at started to look ‘different’, which seemed to coincide with the moment my retinas got ‘tired’ (see the afterimage link above). I didn’t have to wait the full 30 seconds, just until I sensed whatever it was that was different.

If nothing else, it’s a fun diversion. So enjoy, then get back to writing!