Geneva boy will be 21 in 2092
Aaron Beasley of Geneva leapt into a special designation with his birth Friday morning at Delnor-Community Hospital in Geneva.
He'll "turn 1" four years from now. If he wants to drink his first beer on his 21st birthday, he'll have to wait until 2092, as Februaries with 29 days in them happen only every four years, until 2100.
"I don't want a leap-year baby," mom Laura told her doctor when she was told she was due around March 1.
She was scheduled to deliver Aaron by Caesarean section Monday. But the doctor decided Wednesday, for medical reasons, to do it sooner. "Are you going to fight me if I want to take you early, on Friday?" he asked.
"But in the end, you have to do what makes sense," Beasley said.
Coincidentally, one of her nurses Friday has a 20-year-old daughter who is a "leaper," and gave her tips about handling birthdays and such. And another maternity nurse is celebrating her 15th leap-day birthday this year. Another mom was in labor Friday afternoon, and nurses expected she would deliver before midnight.
Aaron's in good company, with actors Dennis Farina (1944) and Antonio Sabato Jr. (1972), rapper Ja Rule (1976), and the late singer Dinah Shore (1916). Composer Gioachino Rossini, whose "The Barber of Seville" played at the Lyric Opera in Chicago Friday night, was a leap-day baby, in 1792.
According to a Web site run by the Honor Society of Leap Year Babies, people born on Feb. 29 run into some difficulties besides having to decide when to celebrate their birthdays in non-leap years.
Computer programs, such as registration forms, sometimes don't recognize Feb. 29 as a real date and won't process it. The society offers a free software patch to vendors to fix that.
In Illinois, people who got a driver's license Friday will have that license expire on March 1, 2012.
Beasley's mother suggested she ask the hospital if she could put Feb. 28 or March 1 on Aaron's birth certificate. Legally, no.
"I thought it would be easier," Brownie Frasier said.
"I think it will be funny when he is old enough to look at a calendar," Beasley said.
"He'll ask 'Where's my date?' " Frasier said.