For a slim, blond-haired junior-college student, one of five women living in a campus apartment, Friday was a day to prepare for a trip the following morning to her hometown a few hours away: a chance to meet her parents and two siblings, grandparents, cousins and a couple of high school friends.

Jodi Scamfer's weekend jaunt to Scappoose seemed to be like any student's typical visit home. But the sophomore at Southwestern Oregon Community College was leaving Coos Bay for a special occasion: the birthday she shared Sunday with her fraternal twin sister, Jami - their fifth.

Scamfer, a child- and family-studies student who transferred to Southwestern last fall from Portland Community College, recalled the curiosity - and teasing - she has received over 20 years as a woman born on Feb. 29, 1984, a day found only in a leap year. Though that fact now is merely a source for friendly curiosity, it was the cause of no end of teasing in her childhood, from grade school onward.

One day in her first-grade class, Scamfer recalled, the teacher asked pupils to mark their birthdays on a large calendar on a countertop. In between leap years, young Jodi was at a loss.

"I didn't know how to tell the teacher my birthday wasn't there," she said, "so I just made up a birthday," adding with a giggle, "I think it was April or May somewhere.

"People brought it up all the time. They were like, 'So how old are you? Two?'" she said, able to laugh at the memory. "Unless it was a leap year, I always said my birthday was on March 1 - just so that I wouldn't get all those remarks."

Though her parents usually celebrated their daughters' birthday on March 1, they made the periodic "true" birthdays every leap year a much more special occasion, Scamfer said.

"It would be a lot bigger deal," she recalled. "My parents would go out and have a bigger party."

The family made an event of the twins' third - or 12th - birthday, inviting about 20 guests to their party. But the sleepover that followed became too eventful for Jodi.

"The girls were all playing with candles; I had long hair and I got it on fire," she said, still abashed. "We ran out the door, but my parents found out; if you know what burnt hair smells like, it was obvious."

After the mishap, Scamfer continued, she had a friend quickly cut off the singed hair, "but two days later my mom couldn't stand (looking at) it anymore and cut it again."

As the twin of a sister born on a day that doesn't exist in most years, Jodi described her relationship with Jami, who lives in Scappoose and is planning a career as a real-estate broker, as closer than the typical link between sisters, or even twins.

"We're very much closer," she said, adding, "We even get sick at the same time! I had the flu last week; I called my mom and she told me Jami had the flu, too."

Apart from the occasional wiseacre with a crack such as "You look old for being 5," Scamfer said, her current acquaintances generally understand and accept her unusual birth date - though there are exceptions.

"I had a friend I told my birthday to," she said, "and he said 'Nuh-uh!' until I showed him by driver's license." On the laminated piece of plastic was the expiration date, modified to prevent any future record-keeping snafus: March 1.

Unlike other people born Feb. 29 who have had difficulty with driver's licenses and other official papers because of their birth dates, Scamfer has had no such trouble but confessed, laughing, "It would be cool, though!"

As she becomes older, Scamfer said, the oddity that is her once-every-four-years birthday becomes less of a burden and more of a pleasant curiosity, perhaps even reason for a good-natured boast.

"When I'm 40 and I can say 'I'm 10,' I'll feel better," she said with a smile.