Even if I live until the 12^th of Never (and that’s a long, long time), I’ll never forget the day Don Knotts came to work.

I remember like it was yesterday. That’s because it was yesterday. I arrived at my office to discover comic actor (some would say comic genius, and who am I to disagree?), Don Knotts sitting in my visitor chair. I was momentarily rattled, but after I regained my composure, I said, "Mr. Knotts, I’m pleased to meet you. I’m a great admirer of your work."

Don Knotts looked at me hard. His bulgy eyes penetrated my soul. Finally, he said caustically, "Don’t patronize me! You know nothing of my work. You wouldn’t know Barney Fife from Mr. Limpet."

Don Knotts was right about this. Of course, everybody knows that Barney Fife was the wacky deputy sheriff on The Andy Griffith Show. That’s just part of the common pool of American pop culture knowledge in the same way that everyone knows that Jeff Gordon is a NASCAR racer or that Big Bird lives in a nest on Sesame Street. However, the truth is, I don’t remember ever watching The Andy Griffith Show, and I have no idea what makes Barney Fife so "fifelike."

I tried to stammer out an apology or a rationalization, but Don Knotts cut me off. "Don’t worry about it." His tone then became earnest as he said, "I need your help, Rich." Knotts explained that, since his return to the movie world in Pleasantville, he’d been doing a variety of indie movie projects. "You know, a guy like me . . . I don’t need the majors anymore," he said.

Knotts said he was preparing to play himself in a movie about a technical editor who finds a portal into the brain of Don Knotts. Before I could tell him it sounded familiar, Knotts read my thoughts and said, "Yeah, yeah, I know it’s been done before. Being John Malkovich. I’m familiar with the movie. But we had the idea first and besides, let me lay the cards on the table here: Being Don Knotts is fundamentally different from being John Malkovich."

I couldn’t argue with that logic.

"I always research my roles thoroughly before I take on a project," continued Knotts. "I followed a deputy sheriff around for six weeks before I took on the Fife role. I spent two hours a day in a fish tank for a month for The Incredible Mr. Limpet. What I need you to do is show me the ins and outs, the agonies and ecstasies, if you will, of being a technical editor. I need to know what’s going to make that guy in my brain tick."

I told Knotts I’d be happy to help. We spent the morning going through my normal working day. I taught Don some proofreading symbols and the basics of editing, and he caught on very quickly. In fact, he did so well that I let him do my morning’s worth of editing while I read the latest issue of Maxim magazine. Around 11:30 Don said, "Let’s break for lunch."

We headed over to the finest restaurant in the town. Pizza Hut. As we entered, I was surprised to hear the hostess say, "Hello Mr. Knotts. Nice to see you again. The usual table?"

Don Knotts nodded, and we headed to a table toward the back of the place. As we settled in, I asked Don Knotts a question I’d been pondering all morning. "So Don," I said, "What’s up with Mick Jagger? Is it just my imagination or is he starting to look more and more like you as he gets older?"

Chuckling as he reached for his water glass, Knotts said, "Oh, yeah. That’s intentional. Back when the Stones were recording Beggars Banquet, I was visiting Keith in the studio and…"

"Keith?" I asked incredulously.

"Yes, Keith Richards. We’ve been friends from way back. Anyway, I was talking to Keith when Mick walked over and stated, in no uncertain terms, that he hoped he looked like me when he got older. And then we recorded ‘Sympathy for the Devil.’"

"We?"

"Yeah, I came up with and arranged the "Hoo Hoo" part in the background. That’s Mick, Keith and me singing."

Don told me more of his adventures with the Rolling Stones, and then mentioned that his original conception of the Barney Fife character was not exactly what the producers had in mind. "I wanted Fife to add gravitas to the show, you know? I thought he should be the moral focus of Mayberry. You know, set up interventions for Otis the Drunk and things like that. It didn’t work out that way. I heard Robert Reed felt the same way about his Mike character in The Brady Bunch."

After lunch, we headed back to work. When we arrived back at my cubicle I checked my voice mail to discover that Don had a message from Andy Griffith. I relayed the message, and Knotts let out a sigh.

"Andy’s trying to get me to do a Matlock TV movie with him. He wants me to play a deputy sheriff named Barnabas Fifer. Have you ever heard anything so thoroughly preposterous? I told him I won’t do it for a dime less than half a million bucks."

And so the afternoon flew by. Don Knotts did my work and regaled me with more tales. Having finished the Maxim magazine, I moved on to an old Cosmopolitan I found in the employee lounge. At the end of the day, Don Knotts thanked me for the experience and told me to go see Being Don Knotts when it was released. He assured me I’d find my name in the credits as a "technical adviser to Mr. Knotts." Then Don Knotts walked off into the sunset, and I drove home whistling the theme from The Andy Griffith Show. Actually, I can’t whistle, so I just sang along with a Mötley Crüe tape, but if I could whistle, I would have.

(The preceding is a work of fiction. Don Knotts, who I’m certain is a very nice man, did not actually say or do anything portrayed in this story (at least not to my knowledge). Also, and perhaps more importantly, there is no Pizza Hut in the town where I work.)