I guess I can count as many non-retirees among my friends as those who’ve called it a career and are retirees … just like my wife and me.

I talked today in Amarillo with one of my non-retired friends. She was asking me how I “liked retirement.” She wondered if we were doing a “lot of traveling.” She added, “It must be nice, being retired.”

Well, yes it is. Then I reminded her of two things: First, she is a long way from retirement; second, it’ll get here before she knows it.

“I hope so,” she said, acknowledging that retirement today seems like a distant vision, adding immediately afterward that “I do still like working, though.” I’m glad to hear that, because she is good at what she does.

However, I have told many working men and women the same thing. The time will arrive; you’ll at yourself in the mirror and you’ll decide it’s time to call it all good. It’s time to retire. Then you’ll sit back for a moment or two — maybe three — and then wonder: When did I get so old? How did it happen so quickly? Where in the world did the time go?

Yep. That’s how it happens. It sneaks up on you. None of us realizes it in real time, but when the time arrives to retire, you almost always wonder the same thing about how it all slipped away so quickly.

We all can tell each other to prepare for retirement, do what we can to ensure financial security. Get all your affairs in order.

You’ll just have to take my word for it, that time has this way of speeding by when we least expect it. We might wish for it to do so in real time.

My mother always told me, though, about the hazards of “wishing your life away.” Don’t wish for retirement to arrive. It’ll get here in no time … none at all.