the dangers of CMA week.

as told by Cameron



CMA week is insane here in Nashville. The city gets smacked with a deluge of cowboy-hat-wearing, boot-wearing, starstruck tourists hoping to bump into their favorite singers so they can objectify them by getting photos of or with them, as though they were a mere tourist attraction.

We locals, as a whole, aren't especially fond of this early summer bedlam, so we do our best to avoid the downtown area while the hullaballoo is going on.


This past June, I had the misfortune of being scheduled to work my retail job every single day of CMA week. Because the store is within walking distance of the Fan Fair, the store was perpetually packed with people sporting the most cliche cowboy apparel you can imagine.


Well. On the third day of CMA week, I was working at the cash register. There had been a long line the entire day, and we were all pretty tense because the store was so hectic.

A teenage girl came to my register, and I, making conversation, was asking about the dress she was buying.
She told me she would be wearing the dress to that night's CMA event.

[shocker. she'd probably pair it with some tacky cowboy boots and a pink cowboy hat, and her fellow fanfriends would gush about how "Nashville" she looked.]

I asked who was playing, and she said the only person she knew of for sure was Martina McBride.


I bristled when I heard that name: she'd been in the store a few weeks prior, and as legend has it, she was quite unkind to some of my coworkers. I had a lot of malice in my heart toward that woman.

This poor girl got an earful: I made sure she was aware of how mean I thought Martina McBride was, and used some choice words in describing her.

The girl politely smiled and listened to my lengthy rant, and then handed me her credit card to pay for her dress.


The name on the card was Martina McBride.


My stomach suddenly dropped into the seat of my pants, and the noisy store became a swirling blurry vortex of doom.

I looked at the girl with an expression of terror, and she silently nodded: Martina McBride was, indeed, her mother.




I managed to stammer an apology and a "have a good day" before I fled to the employee break room, and laugh-cried about the situation for the next 15 minutes.

I had to regain my composure to tend to the rest of the CMA folks who had infested the store. None of them had to know about this encounter.


But instead, I told the story to every single customer who went through my line.