The Heights from Which I've Fallen

My will-they won't-they with Brad Paisley

The day I got thrown off of a television show was my 18th birthday. The year was 2002, and Brad Paisley had my heart in the palm of his hands. It had all started with that white cowboy hat, and the way he looked out from under it: straight into my eyes from his music video on Country Music Televisions’s Top 20 Countdown. “We danced,” he sang, from atop the wicker TV stand in my bedroom, “like no one else had ever danced before.”

We would, I thought, dance that way. But I had to find him first.

I was at the Opry Mills mall in Nashville on the weekend that I first found him. A sizable crowd was forming in front of the Gibson Bluegrass store, so I walked up and investigated, “What’s going on in here?”

“CMT Most-Wanted Live,” a lady with a perm said. “They just filmed, and Brad Paisley was here.” She whispered “Paisley,” and I understood why: it was too fragile a truth. As if just the act of naming it outloud might make it all disappear like a dream.

We stared at one another with widening eyes, kindred in our reverence to this man. “He’s here?” I asked. I whispered “here.”

This was a time for action. I pushed past my new friend and started toward the back of the store, cursing my outfit choice for the day. An American Eagle sweatsuit was understandable for some casual shopping, but not for a brush with greatness. And what had my grandmother always told me about never leav

ing the house without color on my lips? Through the crowd, I saw the white cowboy hat floating atop a sea of people, inching closer to the blinding sunshine of the back exit.

Determined as ever, I moved quickly to get myself between Brad and his departure from the store and from my life. A sea of people were doing the same. Suddenly, I remembered that I had a disposable camera at the bottom of my purse. I pulled it out and wound the thumbwheel, ready to gather evidence.

As Brad approached my area of the crowded line, I put the camera up to my face and readied my finger for the chance he might turn my way. His bodyguard stopped when he got to me.

“Would you like a picture with Brad?” he asked. I looked behind me. Perhaps he was talking to someone not dressed in leisure wear. But no, wonder of wonders, the invitation was extended to me! I nodded dumbly as he grabbed the camera from my hands and put his hand on Brad’s shoulder.

“This young lady would like a picture,” the kind man told him. Brad smiled and said hello, and put his arm around me.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a moment when the entire world rose up in your throat, but the panic comes from the galaxies of words crowding at their exit. So many things want to be said at once, and consequently—tragically— they all stampede and smother one another so that not a one thing can find its way out. I smiled for the picture, but I was searching for a phrase that might open the door for the rest of the important words to come. “I’m such a fan,” is the absolute worst and it would never do.

“I think we could be great friends,” or “What is your email address?” are the words I needed to work my way toward, but those were the questions of stalkers and I assured myself that I was not one.

“Thank you,” I heard myself saying to him. Wait—No! Those were not the right words. Those were words of closure—of “We are done here.” And we weren’t done. The bodyguard handed my camera back to me and everything started to dissolve around me as Brad headed toward the exit. This couldn't be the end of the story, I thought.

On a table at the entrance of the Gibson Bluegrass, I saw a schedule for the filming of future episodes of CMT Live, and as smiling providence would have it, Brad Paisley would return only a few months later—and on my birthday! Well, there it was: the rest of our story. I would find him at the show and we would laugh about that time I went mute. He would see I’m a great listener and a good friend. We would exchange emails. I would be at his next birthday party. Our future unfurled before me like a beautiful tapestry.

“How do I get on this show?”, I asked the lady at the table. My fate was sealed with only a few clicks on a website, she promised me.

“Wonderful, thank you.” It was shaping up to be the best day of my life.

On my 18th birthday, I arrived on set with my friends, Casey and Becca. The email told us to wear solid colors and long pants, and to relax and have fun. I took a curling iron to my already curly hair, and put some color on my lips.

Six or seven high-top tables stood in front of two partitions. I strategically chose the table closest to the entry through which Brad Paisley would walk. I had done my due diligence studying the show and knew that this was my best chance at a close encounter. “I’ll sit here.” I said, quickly claiming the chair beside the entry. Becca and Casey both shrugged.

I had barely settled into my seat when a lady in a headset approached our table.

“Hi, young lady,” she said to me in a sing-song voice. “I’m actually going to need you to come with me.” I smiled at Becca and Casey as I crawled off of the high-top chair. “You told them it was my birthday?” I whispered. They stared at me blankly, confused even. I couldn’t believe that this was all happening so effortlessly. I thought I might be able to talk to him, but I never dreamed I would be serenaded on live television.

The lady in a headset took me by the shoulders and positioned me behind a camera. And then, no, she said. Maybe a little more to the right. I stepped over and into a hoop of power cables. “Um, I think this will be fine. You can just stand here.” I looked over at Becca and Casey and waved nervously.

“Okay,” I said. I stood there. Behind the camera. Up to my knees in ropes of camera wire. It didn’t feel like a very hospitable place to hold one’s guest appearances, but what did I know about television production?

A man in a headset came to talk to the woman in a headset. He looked at me, and then looked at her, and shook his head, “No,” he said. “She can’t be there.” She bit her lip.

“I need to take you somewhere else,” she said. There was something like guilt in her eyes. I crawled over the power cables, and she took me by the shoulders again and ushered me past the hightop table, past my friends who both looked at me with concern as I walked through the break in the partition. I grasped at thin air for a last hope: I must be going back stage.

The lady in the headset took me all the way out to a crowd, who were gathered outside of filming, behind the set. People out here were craning their necks to watch the show from a giant TV screen fixed to the wall. She looked at my feet and said, “I’m sorry,” and then she walked away. She left me like one would leave a feral cat on a backroad at night. I looked up at the screen that the rest of the crowd-peasants were watching, and I heard the opening song of CMT Most-Wanted Live. I watched Brad Paisley walk through that entrance, past an empty place where my chair had been. I saw Becca and Casey clapping on live television and I wondered at the height from which I had fallen on my 18th birthday.

A few days ago, I told Becca that I was revisiting this story. “What do you think happened?” I asked. “Why did they take me off set?”

“Your hair was probably too big.” she said, a little too quickly.

When my friend Reagan read this story, she said that perhaps the woman in the headset was my guardian angel. And I laughed at the thought, because how generous of her to think that this meeting would have actually changed the course of mine or Brad Paisley’s life.

But I don’t know, really. I mean… who’s to say? Suppose big hair was something he was into in those days, and suppose I had said something really witty within earshot when he walked through that entrance.

What a terrible thing it would be to get what we want. Because falling from that height on my 18th birthday set me stumbling toward the happiest thing I would ever know: Andrew and our three kids circled around a fire pit in our woodsy backyard on a cool May evening, strung lights overhead. Seeing the first firefly of the season. Feeling tucked in and safe; A pleasant “withness;” A joy that comes from a deeper place than my sorrow.

And I wish Brad Paisley all the same.

And what about you? Do you have any stories to share about a time you met (or hoped to meet) a celebrity?