I will be turning 44 next week on my 11th birthday.

Yes, I’m one of those oddest of oddballs: the leap-year baby. But in my case, I dare say it’s even odder. It usually takes me about 3 to 5 minutes to answer when people ask me when my birthday is. I will try to be faster here.

During my early years, I always had birthday parties Feb. 28. My elementary school filed my birthday as Feb. 28. And now my driver’s license also reads Feb. 28. But I will never forget my eighth birthday in 1976 during a family ski trip at Okemo Mountain Resort in Vermont. My mom told me I was finally going to have a real birthday, but I was actually only turning 2.

I will spare you the details of how long it took her to explain the astronomical minutiae that makes a leap year necessary in our Gregorian calendar to an 8-year-old, but I finally understood that from that point on I’d never have a “normal” birthday again. She also assured me I was “special.”

But why the confusion? I wasn’t the first to be born Feb. 29, and all other leap-year babies are documented. Here’s how mom explained it to me in a letter on my second eighth birthday in 2000.

On that day in 1968, Dad had to rush mom to the hospital in Philadelphia to unburden her of the 10½-pound nightmare that would become me after a few short hours.

She was wheeled into the delivery room shortly before midnight Feb. 28, and I was born around 4 a.m. Aftward, a clerical snafu would forever confuse me and anyone who’s ever tried to decorate my birthday cakes.

There was a nursing shift change at midnight. Nurse No. 1, in her final act of diligence that night, filed a birth announcement for little Edward Ginzel Holteen Jr. on Feb. 28, 1968, (yes, Ginzel. Move past it).

A few hours later, Nurse No. 2 did the same thing, but she had the advantage of actually being there when I was born Feb. 29.

Somehow in the pre-Bill Gates era, both forms found their way to some clerk’s office in Harrisburg. Long story short, that’s how I came to have two birth certificates and two different birthdays between my driver’s license and passport.

This would be confusing enough if the discrepancy was between May 10 and 11, but of course, it happened on the last day of February in the year that brought us Richard Nixon and the Tet Offensive.

And as many of those babies born to GIs in southeast Asia who were scorned by Asians and Anglos alike, I’ve always felt a bit out of place: I don’t have a regular birthday like normal people, yet.

I’m not even a “normal” leap-year baby. (I don’t mean to belittle those poor children who were really persecuted – just trying to illustrate a point.)

Now, I just say my birthday’s on the last day of February, and when there’s a leap year, I party like it’s 2052 (which is when I’ll turn 21 and can legally drink!). Which is what I’ll be doing next Wednesday, Feb. 29. Feel free to buy me a beer or steak dinner.

ted@durangoherald.com