Skinny, Lovable Nerd

"Don was a small man... but everything else about him was large: his mind, his expressions," Griffith told The Associated Press on Saturday. "Don was special. There's nobody like him. I loved him very much," Griffith added. "We had a long and wonderful life together."

When I was about 12 years old, we started watching television. My parents had always had a television and there was a broken television in our room where we put all the blankets. I'm not sure why it was broken or why we still had it.

If we wanted to watch television previous to my 12th birthday, we had to sneak into our parents bedroom, turn the television on at low volume and slink down below the edge of the bed. Our parents were incredibly hard sleepers. We only did this on Saturdays because it was the only day worth getting a whipping over being caught watching tv.

When I was 12, we moved into a new house, with enough room for the girls to have their own room, the boys to have their own and our parents had theirs. We had a real, ho nest to goodness living room, a really big kitchen and a dining area. And a brand new television.

My parents put the television in the girls room, the room closest to theirs so they could break up any "it's my turn" television bickering. For the most part, we got along. No one wanted to stop watching Saturday morning cartoons, music videos, or wrestling.

One day, I turned the television on and I see Don Knotts dressed as a gun slinger, though a nerdy one at that. A woman shoots a gun and everyone thinks Don did it. I watch the movie and laugh my way through it. He sure did look funny in The Shakiest Gun In The West. Then I watched The Incredible Mr. Limpet and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. I'm pretty sure I watched all of these movies in one sitting. I loved them. I started watching the Andy Griffith Show and fell in love with the characters, the stories, the sense of humour, the theme song.

Some people say The Andy Griffith Show wasn't complete once Don Knotts left it in 1965. I can believe it. I've only seen the episodes he's in. I loved the nervous way he was, the facial expressions, his erratic movements. It was all a part of his comedy. And when I was older and moved to Matlock (watching this, more than turning 30, shows my age) I was glad, in the later seasons, to see Don Knotts and Andy Griffith together again.

Don Knotts has been around for a while, making us laugh with his various antics, and that has not lessened as he's aged. I have seen brief glimpses from his time in the Steve Allen era of the tonight show and he was funny. He's always been funny. Funnier than most people have the right to be, funny without saying a word. Even in his later work, he made his age work for him. His death does not take his comedy away, but for a little while, the enjoyment will be less.

Of course, I haven't forgotten Mr. Furley. The eyes, the suits, the naivete. RIP Don Knotts.