A Rare Celebration~ In Which I Give You An Excuse To Eat Cake

Good day, my bloggerly companions!

This blog post is going to be slightly irregular, but I thought it would be only fitting, seeing as it’s Leap Year and tomorrow is a day that only comes once every four years. It is a very special day, and as such I wanted to do something a little different.

Hence, today I am going to tell you a story. It is a story that may or may not be familiar to you. Regardless, it is a tale that I always think of when it comes to that extra day of February.

So, without further ado…

The Tale

Once upon a time, there was a young man. A little lad. A baby, in fact. This baby was born on the rarest day of the year.

This day is so rare, that it doesn’t even appear in most years at all. Most years just skip right by it and never notice that it isn’t there. But every so often (every fourth year, to be exact) this standoffish day peeps its head out, right around the end of February.

This day has a name. It’s name is Twenty-Ninth. Twenty-Ninth of February.

The baby has a name as well. His name is Frederic.

Now, it came about that when Frederic was a little lad, his nurse made a grave error. She was told by her master to take young Frederic and apprentice him to a pilot. Alas, the nurse, being hard of hearing, misheard and instead took and indentured Frederic to a pirate.

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This is where things begin to get tricky.

Frederic was an upstanding lad, and abhorred the nature of piracy, but, as an apprentice in their band, he deemed it his duty to pursue piracy with great vigor. So he did.

(Frederic, above all else, was a slave of duty.)

He was apprenticed until his twenty-first birthday, however, and upon the day he turned twenty-one, he left their pirate band, telling them how fond he was of them all individually… despite the fact that collectively he looked upon them with an disgust that amounted to absolute detestation. They understood, of course.

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This is where things begin to get trickier.

After several more things happened, such as deceptions revealed and romances blossomed and opportunities seized and more deceptions fabricated and opportunities forgone, Frederic was confronted by his late commander, the Pirate King (and Ruth, his old nurse, who had joined the pirate band herself).

They revealed to Frederic that he was born in Leap Year on the Twenty-Ninth of February, and explained this paradox- that though Frederic was twenty-one years of age, according to birthdays he was only five (and a little bit over).

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You can probably see where this is going.

After laughing (very musically) at this preposterous notion, Frederic found to his horror that, according to his indentures, he was still apprenticed to the pirate band. And he would be bound to them for quite some time. His twenty-first birthday was not to come for another sixty-four years.

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As Frederic’s true love, Mabel put it:

“Oh horrible! Catastrophe! Appalling!”

Don’t worry too much about him though, because after a stealthy ambush and a short battle and a timely appearance by Queen Victoria’s portrait, everything came to a happy end.

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Much time has passed since then. If Frederic were alive, tomorrow would be his forty-first birthday.

Epilogue

As many of you have probably gathered, Frederic is a character from the comic Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Pirates of Penzance. It is a hilarious show full of witty dialogue and ridiculous situations, and if you aren’t familiar with it, I implore you to watch it or read it or something because it is so much fun. Also now is a fitting time to do so, seeing as it’s Leap Year and all.

Honestly, if nothing else, Frederic’s birthday is a wonderful excuse to eat cake.

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Have you heard the story of Frederic? What things do you associate with Leap Year? Do you know anyone in real life who was born on the twenty-ninth of February? Do you look for excuses to eat cake on a regular basis?