A quick glance through The Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies – an online group for leaplings to meet and trade stories – shows that such a youthful feeling is knitted into the leapling experience: one member is having a kids-themed party for their 44th; another is producing a documentary film about leaplings called Forever Young.

Maybe it’s the lack of birthday definiteness that does it. When your real birthday hardly ever comes, it’s hard to see it as a milestone – the reason you give pause and take stock of your life. That said, most of us will choose 28 February or 1 March (or both) as our birthdays. Growing up, my mum would let me ‘choose’ when it was. I personally have no attachment to either; I go with what’s most convenient that year. Or whichever day Facebook puts up a birthday notification for me.

Does that sound sad? My birthday decided by a faceless tech company? It’s actually an improvement. Before the platform, birthdays would be drip-fed over two days, often lacking fanfare. In my school, the teacher would bring you a sweet on your birthday, but my teacher and my pals were never in sync. From the youngest age I knew that if I wanted that big, bombastic birthday feeling, where everyone uniformly says “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”, then I would have to notify everyone well in advance. As a nine-year-old, there’s nothing like project management to suck the fun out of things.

This is what it’s really like to have a leap year birthday