Dixie Dew and I quit a bank I’ve been doing business with for 15 years, marking the first time in 20 years that I have closed a financial account.

Here’s one thing I’m not good at doing: wasting time. I’m not bragging. We all should just take time to kill time before time kills us.

My friend, Susan, married the other day. Been claiming that she was going to. Then, she up and did it. Just like that.

For a couple of years, I had been trying to get Mama to write my column one week. Well aware of how much readers loved her, I knew they would be tickled to get her side of our story.

Not long ago, I found myself in the midst of one of life’s great treasures.

It all came about because Mama had her annual physical that required her to fast. Mama doesn’t do well when she doesn’t eat – she gets “swimmy headed.” So, she had her blood work done and with enough time remaining before her appointment, we headed out for breakfast.

One day I ran into my precious second grade teacher, Mrs. Rudeseal, in what used to be called the dime store, but in these times of economic advancement is now called the dollar store.

Just as I tore past them, hurrying – always hurrying – into the small general store, I heard the old man speak to the younger one sitting beside him. Both were relaxing in folding aluminum lawn chairs.

Upfront, I’ll tell you: This is a column that somebody out there – maybe more than one somebody – needs to read.

When Ferrol Sams, one of the most beloved writers of Southern literature, was inducted into his native Georgia’s Writers of Hall of Fame, he did not let the moment pass without taking the opportunity to underscore one of life’s most enduring truths.

The other day I was digging through a box for one thing or the other when I ran across a picture of my best pal, Karen, and me when we were in junior high and on the student council together.

Two rather disturbing things happened during our family Easter last year, both of which I hope can be corrected this year.

This is the kind of goody-two-shoes friends I have: Whenever Karen, Patti or Susan has a story to tell that involves someone cussing, they will not repeat the word. They spell it out. Unless it’s really bad and then they will only give me the first letter of the word.

After early church and Sunday School, Mama and I had hurried to the grocery store. An older friend was ailing badly with the flu, so I told Mama I’d made him some quick homemade chicken soup and she could make the cornbread muffins. Then, I’d run it over to him.

[Editor’s note: The Citizen received the following email Monday from our syndicated columnist, Ronda Rich.]

Dear friends, with heavy heart and tear-soaked cheeks, I must tell you that my Mama died suddenly yesterday of a brain aneurysm.

The other day I was in an out-of-town grocery store when I passed a guy in fresh vegetables, smiled, said, “Hello,” and kept going.

I picked up the package left on the back porch and read the mailing label that said RCR Racing, Welcome, NC. I smiled and hurried inside to tear it open.

Flipping through the pages of People magazine, I saw where a guy with whom I once spent a week in Hawaii had been named as one of sexiest men in America.

Three friends and I were motoring our way from the western edge of Kentucky over to Louisville when someone proclaimed a sudden and immediate need for an orange Nehi soda.

Dixie Dew and I went away for the weekend to visit our friends, Stevie and Darrell in Nashville. It was actually Dew’s invitation but I was allowed to tag along.

If a woman is truly fortunate, she will know two distinct dating periods in her life. The first will be when she is deemed mature enough and interesting enough to date older men. The second will come when she is declared fun enough and sexy enough to date younger men.

If you met my cousin, Melissa, you’d like her immediately. You’d be captivated by her porcelain perfect complexion and straight, even teeth. She possesses an enviable lithe, slender body, which is standard loveliness on that side of my family but somehow chose to orphan me.

Last year as New Year’s approached, a reporter called and asked for my resolutions for the upcoming year for a story she was doing.

At a Thanksgiving luncheon, I was holding my 18-month-old nephew, Tripp, as I visited tables to speak to folks. I stopped and greeted a friend, patting him on his back. Tripp watched quietly then leaned down, stretching out his little arm and patted Billy, too, in that awkward, uncoordinated way that babies have.

Christmas never comes to me without a childhood memory that, in turn, throws its arms around another memory and brings it tagging along.

Not long ago I was asking a friend of mine, who has a private jet, about his long-time pilot whom I have known fondly for many years and flown with on several occasions.

When I and several of the girls came into the theater for the folk art musical, a pleasant man handed each of us a piece of paper with words on it.

You knew it was going to happen. You had to know there would come a time when some reader somewhere felt compelled to give me a grammar lesson.

It’s a sure thing that when family gathers at my house for Thanksgiving dinner, there will certainly be a hot, gooey dish of homemade macaroni and cheese on the table.

This year, I decided, the birthday present I most wanted was not to get in our annual argument with Mama. So, I gave it to myself.

In my hometown there is a monument that stands strong and proud in the center of the lovely town square. It is a soldier who, somewhere long back in time, folks took to calling “Ol’ Joe.”