I do not look like Renee Zellweger.

The other day Husband came home and said, “Guess whose driveway we paved today.”

Husband is an owner-operator dump trick driver, hauling asphalt and gravel for a company that builds roads, parking lots, driveways, and such. So he’s been in a lot of different neighborhoods, and anything that’s new around the Nashville area, he’s probably seen up close.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Whose?”

“Guess!” he replied.

Well, Husband doesn’t usually play the guessing game, so I figured it had to be somebody very important. “Well, where did you work today?” I figured if I knew the location, I might could come up with a name.

“Outside of Franklin,” he said.

“Um…....One of the Judd’s?” I don’t know anybody else around that area.

“No, guess again.”

“I don’t know. I can’t guess. Just tell me.”

“Kenny and Renee,” he said.

“Kenny and Renee,” I repeated. I was clueless.

“You mean you don’t know Kenny and Renee?”

“Kenny…….Rogers?” I tell you, I’m clueless.

“No, Kenny Chesney and Renee Zellweger.”

“Oh,” I said. Now this news just did not impact me the way that he apparently expected it to. He seemed a little disappointed that I wasn’t more enthused. (You see, we’ve discussed Renee before; one of my students told me once that I look like Renee, and my husband agreed. I told him he was nuts—I’m much better looking!). To tell you the truth, I wasn’t all that enthused because people’s celebrity status has never really impressed me all that much, even when I was thirteen and saw Reba McEntyre in J. C. Penney or when I was older and working in the grocery store and Allen Jackson came in. (Oh, I also saw Allen Jackson at the Chapel Hill tractor pull. He had to stand in line at the Port-O-John just like everybody else.) Living in the Nashville area, you sometimes have the chance to bump into celebrities, and honestly, I don’t see why some people think it’s such a big deal.

But apparently it is. The CMA Music Festival (formerly known as Fan Fair) is going on right now, and people have traveled from far and wide just for the chance at rubbing elbows with a country music star. These people stand in long lines for hours under the hot sun in humidity so thick you can practically see it just for an autograph and maybe a picture with a “star.” And they will go home and show it off to all their friends and blow up the pictures and frame them and hang them in a prominent spot in their house. They will always remember the day they met Deirks Bentley, or Mel Tillis, or Jessica Andrews (Husband knows her dad) as one of the best days of their life.

Now tell me, how have these people’s lives been enriched by the experience? How will they be better people because of it? If one of the defining moments (as Dr. Phil would call it) of my life is the day I stood in line for five hours to get an autograph from insert famous person’s name here, that isn’t saying a lot for me. I kind of feel sorry for those people.

“So, did you see her?”

“I’m not sure. A woman drove in in a gray Lexus, but I’m not sure if it was her.”

“Well, what did you see?”

“Well, they’ve got a big shed with several real nice John Deere tractors.”

Now that’s really impressive!