The Skyliner

Issue date: 3/1/06 Section: Opinion

Bryant

Kayla Bryant
Online Editor


I can remember walking into my living room when I was younger and hearing that familiar whistled tune streaming from the television set. Andy Griffith and son would be walking down a dusty path in their gray scale world. Many a lesson I learned from Griffith and the town of Mayberry with all of its interesting inhabitants. None were so interesting, however, as Barney Fife, Griffith's deputy.

Fife always thought he was a much better police officer than he actually was. He kept his one bullet in his shirt pocket, his badge was always shined and he was always on alert for crime that rarely took place in the sleepy town of Mayberry. Instead of being a super cop, though, he would accidentally lock himself in a jail cell, shoot himself in the foot and embarrass himself in front of his girl multiple times a week. He would do these things over and over, and I still laughed every time. He had become reliable in messing up. Regardless of what was going on in my preteen world, I knew that Barney Fife would be having it worse off and somehow knowing that made things seem better.

Don Knotts, the man who brought the character of Barney Fife to life, died of lung cancer on Friday, Feb. 24. He was 81 years old. When I heard of his death, I was actually quite sad. Even though Fife was only a character that he played on a television series, I felt as if he had died with Knotts. Feeling this way made me realize what an impact Knotts had made.

From a young age, we are taught to strive for complete success. We need the cliché nice house and high paying job. Our car is to be the newest model in a limited edition series. We are supposed to know what we're are going to do with the rest of our lives and the only impact we are supposed to make is being the absolute best.

I'm sure Knotts didn't know that a decade or two after he acted out a scene as Fife that a young girl would be sitting on her living room floor laughing at his antics. There isn't any way he could have seen that The Andy Griffith Show would still be running on TV Land and Nick at Nite. Walking on to the set for the first time, Knotts wasn't sure that the series would last longer than a season. And yet he made such an incredible impact.

He didn't cure world hunger. He didn't stop any wars. He didn't even cause an increase in the number of deputies in the nation. But for that half hour, he made my life just a little less hectic.

You never know what impact you are going to make on someone without even realizing it. It is important to remember that. Even if you don't buy the nice house, work at a high paying job or own the newest car, you will impact someone.

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