Growing up watching “The Andy Griffith Show,” it’s amazing we children, boys in particular, didn’t hate Opie.

If you were already an adult when this show first aired in the early 1960s, you may wonder how could anyone dislike Opie? He was the perfect TV son, the ultimate little boy.

The red-headed, winning Opie, played by a young Ron Howard, was smart, and sweet, and good, a fine example of a child. Well, these are more than enough reasons for one kid to dislike another kid.

For an adult to hold up a child as an example of fine behavior is to make that same child a target of dislike and contempt to other children.

Yet, while Opie may have been all of those fine things, to plenty of real children of the ’60s, he seemed like one of us.

Opie made mistakes. He stood up for his friends. He feared the bully who took his lunch money and tricked adults into giving him more money to pay off the bully and still enjoy his milk.

He got into scraps. He got mad at his friends, especially one boy who seemed to get too much of Andy’s attention. He played with a slingshot, accidentally killed a mama bird and then raised the chicks.

With nothing better to do, he ate too many apples, dozed off and ended up in another town. Opie faced the conflict of peer pressure and parental demands when a trouble-making new boy becomes popular with his friends and a threat to parents.

Opie got into trouble, and we youngsters could understand that.

He often got into trouble with Andy Griffith’s Sheriff Andy Taylor of all people. Even to a child, Sheriff Taylor was the epitome of good-humored patience. Andy Taylor could put up with a big city cop’s snide comments, solve a crime, and then josh the embarrassed big city cop.

Sheriff Taylor could cope with the Darling family. He could negotiate with rock-tossing Ernest T. Bass. He understood Goober and Gomer. He enjoyed the dull Howard Sprague.

And he could put up with Deputy Barney Fife’s antics day in and day out. Even a youngster recognizes that Barney is more of a child, in many ways, than Opie.

Yet, if Opie messed up, or seemed to mess up, the ever-patient Andy lost his cool. Though Andy showed spurts of frustration with all of the other characters, he really seemed to save a slow burn for times when Opie did something wrong or, as it often worked out, if Opie seemed to do wrong.

Opie wants to spend a lot of money on a present for a little girlfriend; Andy gets mad and assumes Opie is foolishly wasting money; Andy learns Opie wanted to buy a poor girl a coat for winter.

Opie shatters a piggy bank of found money; Andy gets mad and assumes he’s blowing the money after discovering the owner has arrived claiming the money; Andy learns that Opie hasn’t gone on a spending spree but broke the piggy bank to return the money to its rightful owner.

Opie makes a few bad grades; Andy gets mad and assumes afternoon football is the cause so he orders Opie to do nothing but study after school; Opie’s grades fall further and Andy realizes he’s gone too far.

Opie describes a man as a person who jingles and works among the treetops; Andy gets mad and assumes Opie is making stuff up; Andy learns that Opie has met and is describing a utility lineman.

Usually, Opie got in the most trouble not for something he actually did but for something a parent thought he did. He got into trouble because his dad refused to hear an explanation.

What kid doesn’t understand that feeling?

So a kid could identify with Opie. He wasn’t the goody-goody kid of other TV shows of the day but he also wasn’t like the smart-mouthed kids on many TV shows of today.

Opie was a TV kid that real kids could see eye to eye. Years later, Opie is a kid that parents can learn from.

Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.

This story has been edited since first published to correct BB gun to slingshot.