Students celebrate fifth birthday over weekend

Hans Arnesen and Lanyon Blair will be celebrating their fifth birthdays on Sunday. \nBut there are no plans for inviting kindergarten classmates over for cake and a game of "Pin the Tail on the Donkey," nor will there be a trip to the roller rink. \nArnesen and Blair are both sophomores at IU. They are not Mozart-like prodigies, though. Both were born in 1984. It just happens they were born on Feb. 29, meaning their birthday only falls on the calendar every fourth year.\nBoth students have only met a handful of others who share Feb. 29 birthdays in their lifetimes. According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, there are around 200,000 people in the U.S. who were born on Leap Day. There is a one in 1,506 chance of being born on Feb. 29.\nIn spite of these odds, Blair didn't have to go very far to find someone else who shares his birthday -- his grandfather was also born on Feb. 29. Blair's grandpa was born in 1920, so Sunday will actually be his 21st birthday.\n"He's going to be 21 now, so I guess he can go out and drink," Blair joked.\nArnesen and Blair were both fairly young when they had the conversation that every parent fears having with their child -- the one where they have to explain that their birthday doesn't happen every year.\nArnesen does not remember how old he was when he figured this out, but he had no issues with having to wait for an election year to celebrate his birthday.\n"I just took it as a given," Arnesen said.\nBlair was 10 years old when he and his parents had "the talk."\n"They told me my 'real' age was however old I was divided by four," Blair said. "So at the time, I was about two-and-a-half."\nIn a non-leap year, the two employ different methods to celebrate growing another year older. Blair usually denotes March 1 as his birthday, since it is the day after Feb. 28. Arnesen takes a more liberal approach.\n"I'll celebrate on the 28th, or the 1st, or both. Whatever is better," Arnesen said.\nBoth agree nothing beats a year in which they can actually celebrate their real birthday, though.\n"There's more celebration," Arnesen said. "Like when I was eight, we had a surprise party."\nBlair's favorite birthday was the day he turned 16. His mom told his friends to get him presents for a four year old, which meant he received a lot more barnyard animals and other toddler toys than he had anticipated.\nHe did get a slightly more mature present in the form of car keys, though he had to pay for half the price of the car. \nArnesen and Blair find the uniqueness of having a Leap Year birthday to be something of which they are proud. It's also something that will always capture someone's attention in a conversation.\n"It seems weird, but I'm not a freak of nature," Blair said. "I have two arms and two legs."\nArnesen appreciates the advantage of having a birthday no one forgets.\n"It's pretty cool," he said. "When you tell someone your birthday, they always remember it."\n-- Contact senior writer Alex Hickey at ahickey@indiana.edu.