WILTON – If Gloria Farmer counted only the birthdays that fell on the date she was born, she would be 21 today, of legal age to drink.

But because she’s counted birthdays for most of her life as either Feb. 28 or March 1 – whichever date fellow celebrants would like – she’s really 84.

Sometimes the celebrating seemed like it went on for a week, Farmer said.

Her kids used to joke that they would take her to a bar when she reached legal age.

Birthday cards lined a shelf in her apartment Thursday at Village View, and her brother, Lloyd Morrison, called from Florida to wish her happy birthday.

The two joked about the weather, Wednesday’s 10 inches of snow and the more that’s predicted.

When she was a child, having an actual birthday only every four years was funny to many people. But it wasn’t funny to her as a kid.

“I couldn’t seem to understand why I didn’t have a birthday like everybody else did,” Farmer said, from a chair, feet up on a hassock.

Her family would celebrate on the off years and her mother would try to give her a party on Feb. 29 when it came around, but she was usually sick, she said.

“It didn’t bother me too much; it was just hard to comprehend,” Farmer said.

The state calls March 1 her birthday on her license, she said, but that’s not right.

“I wasn’t born in March, I say I was born in February, but I wasn’t born on Feb. 28, either,” Farmer said, laughing.

She remembers a teacher in the eighth grade, Theda Munson, who also had a leap year birthday.

“She took me to a movie on my real birthday. We both had one that day. I thought that was very nice. You know, I’ve never forgotten it,” she said.

Farmer grew up in Wilton, born in the section of town known as Dryden.

She went to business college and started out in an office at a shoe manufacturer but decided she could make more money in the shoe shop itself, she said.

“I’ve had a good life. I can’t complain. I had my health pretty well and that means a lot,” she said.

She expects the phone to ring constantly today as she gets birthday wishes from family and others she hasn’t heard from for a while. Other than that, she doesn’t expect too much.

“It’s just another day; it comes and it goes,” Farmer said. “I don’t know what the kids got going. I just enjoy having them all together.”

She enjoys spending time with them, her friends and others she meets along the way.

“I’m a people person. I just don’t want to be alone,” Farmer said.