Leap Year 2016: What Will You Do With Extra Day?

(Editor’s note: Bill Kalmar, of Lake Orion, occasionally shares his musings with Patch readers. In this op-ed, he takes a look at the lighter side of leap year. We thought it was so much fun that we decided to share it with a wider audience. Take a moment at the end and tell us what you’ll do with your extra day.)

BY BILL KALMAR

Every four years our Gregorian calendar provides us with an extra day.

Leap year, as it is called, or intercalary or bissextile year, contains one additional day to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year. (And if you understand that, please contact me.)

In any event, 2016 is the year we gain an extra day, not to be confused with gaining an extra hour for Daylight Saving Time. Are you still with me?

So here we are, approaching Feb. 29.

Another friend of ours who was born in leap year will be turning — depending on how you count it — sweet 16 or 64 years of age. The latter means one year away from Medicare; the former means going through the vagaries of puberty. I’d opt for Medicare.

What about the rest of us who won’t be celebrating an anniversary or birthday on Feb. 29? How about taking time to engage in the activities or perform the tasks that heretofore we overlooked?

In that regard, permit me to provide a list of 29 things to do on your leap year day:

1. Read all the comics on the newspaper funny page. “Doonesbury” and “Peanuts” continue to be classics.

2. Relive your childhood by preparing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

3. To announce your entrance into a restaurant, play your kazoo.

4. Pick up a copy of Mad magazine and spend the day laughing.

5. Quit your job and learn to become a ventriloquist.

6. Make a phone call to someone you haven’t talked to in years.

7. Memorize the words to Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken.”

8. Go to Panera Bread Co. and eat a cinnamon roll.

9. Watch the movie, “National Lampoon’s Animal House” starring John Belushi.

10. Call a teacher from your past and rave about his or her class.

11. Ride your bike without fenders through a puddle of mud.

12. Send a bouquet of flowers to a nearby senior citizen home.

13. Treat your significant other to high tea at an upscale hotel.

14. Volunteer to read “Tootle,” by Gertrude Crampton (Simon and Schuster, 1945) to a kindergarten class.

15. Listen to “Strange Day In Hogsville USA” by the Kingston Trio on YouTube.

16. Surprise the person behind you in line at the coffee shop and pay for his or her drink.

17. Go to the drive-through at a fast food restaurant and state, “It’s to go.”

18. Practice your armpit crepitating skills.

19. For you Ferris Bueller fans, call a Chicago restaurant and make a reservation in the name of Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago.

20. Proceed to a college administration building and ask about learning to become a rodeo clown.

21. While sitting in your doctor’s office blurt out, “When I say ‘hee’ you say ‘haw,’” and see how many people take you up on it.

22. Enlist all your neighbors in a game of leap frog.

23. Listen to a presidential debate and try not to laugh.

24. Go to a farm and learn how to milk a cow.

25. Learn how to tie a cherry stem into a knot with your tongue.

26. Send an invoice to your doctor for time spent in the waiting room.

27. Contact AAA or OnStar and request navigation for the route to Bora Bora.

28. Take a country western dance lesson and learn the “Achy Breaky.”

29. Abandon your undergarments and go commando.

Whatever you decide to do, have fun doing it! Now where’s my kazoo?

» Photo by Pete Markham via Flickr / Creative Commons