Roger Collier

I t seems like only 17 days ago at 2:43 p.m. that I received an e-mail from the Citizen offering me a biweekly Sunday column. Where has the time gone? Sadly, the day has come for this biweekly Sunday columnist to bid adieu. I'm retiring.

When the Citizen's offer landed in my inbox, I was ecstatic. A biweekly Sunday column! But my ecstaticisment swiftly gave way to confusion. Biweekly?

Did that mean twice a week or once every two weeks? I looked it up and discovered it means both. Whoa. If my math was correct, that added up to five Sunday columns every two weeks.

Could I produce that much content biweek in, biweek out? I wasn't sure, but I could try -- and I'm glad I did.

I have many fond memories of my tenure as a Citizen biweekly Sunday columnist. Where to begin? There was the time my editor told me the words "your," "you're" and "yore" mean different things. Boy, we shore laughed about that.

And I'll never forget the day I e-mailed my editor to remind him of his promise to pay me $7,000 per column, only to have him respond that I was "full of it." By "it," of course, he meant talent. And can you really put a price on talent? (Yes. $7,000. Minimum.)

But the most rewarding part of being a biweekly Sunday columnist isn't the forthcoming $7,000 cheque. It's receiving feedback from you, my vast and loyal readership.

You already started e-mailing me thought-provoking questions, such as: "Does the Citizen actually pay you to write this stuff?" Other times you send me great advice on grammar, on spelling, on redundancy, on grammar.

At times, however, you can be tough. My biggest critic is an Internet commenter named Anony Mous. In response to one of my columns, he called me a "left-wing, pinko hack" and, several comments later, a "right-wing, wacko nut-job."

What can I say, Anony, you are right on both counts. I am a riddle wrapped in misery inside an enema.

Overall, the Citizen's Roger Collier era has been wonderful, for you and me alike, but it hasn't been all sunshine and marshmallows. Though my work has been described (by me) as awe-inspiring, my work environment could only be described as awful.

The cursing. The violent outbursts. The constant nudity. I could barely stand it, but there was little I could do, considering I work alone in my basement.

Since beginning my retirement, several paragraphs ago, I feel like a new man. I have time now to do the things I've always wanted to do. Travel the world. Read Moby Dick. Greet people entering Wal-Mart.

Not that being a former biweekly Sunday columnist is all moonbeams and semi-sweet chocolate. Like a multi-sided object with one dark side, retirement has its dark side.

The worst part is when strangers beg me to return to biweekly Sunday column writing. They don't actually say anything, or even look at me, but there's something in the way they ignore me that screams "come back!" I've moved on, people. Can't you?

Then there was the person -- let's call her Mya Mother -- who said that, at 35, I was too young to retire. Oh, really? Ageism much?

My wife is no better. She says I can't afford to stop working. Baloney. Why should only people with "positive bank account balances" be allowed to retire? Is there not more to retirement than eating caviar, buying diamonds and having electricity?

So we have to scale back a little. Big deal. Imagine how much we could save if we fed the kids only on alternate days. Some might call that gross parental negligence. I call it an anti-childhood obesity program.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong about this retirement thing. Somewhere around word 634 of this column, it struck me -- if I'm not a biweekly Sunday columnist, what am I?

Sure, I'm a husband and a father and a non-practising blood donor, but I don't care about those things. I care about you, my legion of devotees, les connoisseurs de Collier.

You guys have never abandoned me, even when, several inches above this sentence, I abandoned you. Well, consider yourselves rebandoned.

I'm coming out of retirement. I'm back, baby, and better than ever! No need to thank me. Your adoring silence says it all.

Now if only I could rid my workplace of sexual harassment. The daily compliments on my body are flattering, I admit, but it's inappropriate for me to talk like that at work.