“There goes my hero. Watch him as he goes. There goes my hero. He’s ordinary.” – Dave Grohl, Nate Mendel and Pat Smear

I had to fly in and out of Atlanta’s airport a couple of weeks ago.

Thanks for your condolences. I have never been to the Atlanta airport without getting turned around once or twice.

This time, however, I turned around on the airport’s Plane Train and found myself next to actor Tony Hale who starred in hit shows like “Arrested Development” and “Veep” and is the voice of Forky in a couple of the “Toy Story” movies.

Well, I think it was Tony Hale. To my wife’s chagrin, I did not say anything to potential Tony Hale, so I will never know for sure.

She thinks I should have given Hale a hello. After all, regular people are only given so many encounters with famous people.

I shared the same story with my boss at work, and she thought it may have been better not to hail Mr. Hale. She remembered when she once encountered actress Elisabeth Shue – from “The Karate Kid,” a couple of the “Back to the Future” movies, and many other Hollywood projects – at the Grand Canyon.

Shue asked my boss to take a picture of her mother and her. My boss thought of bringing up a connection she had with some cousins of Shue but picked up the vibe that maybe Shue just wanted a moment of being a normal person getting a photograph at an awe-inspiring American landmark.

She took the picture without acknowledging Shue’s celebrity status.

In my encounter, Hale was by himself, wearing a baseball cap and doing a good job of just fitting in with the crowd. Maybe it was the right course of action to let him go home without having to acknowledge yet another stranger pointing out he is indeed that guy from that show.

Psychologists call the relationship regular people form with famous people a parasocial bond.

It roughly means that the more we follow particular celebrities and learn about them, the more closely connected we feel to them despite that connection not being reciprocated back to us. The celebrity has no idea who the fan is and has no emotional connection to the fan’s life, work or beliefs.

I have thought a lot about parasocial bonds in the past week after the death of Dolly Parton. Parton is one of one when it comes to trying to find an apt comparison in American history and maybe even world history.

Weirdly, the person that came the closest in my brief flip through my mental rolodex was Jimmy Buffett. Both were Southern, rose to fame as musical artists writing their own material, gained a huge cult following and capitalized their renown into creating their own personally branded business empires.

With no shade meant to Buffett, Parton’s story arc surpasses even his. She is something like Buffett, Cleopatra, Mary Kay and Daisy Duke rolled into one.

Because Parton’s influence is so far-reaching, particularly here in the South, it feels like we all have a bond with her. Therefore, many of us, including myself, were left feeling a twinge of sadness that she is no longer of this world as of last Tuesday.

Acknowledging all that, I worry too many of us are so wrapped up in celebrity culture that we believe the loss of an influential person requires a multiday period of national mourning.

Many media influencers and public figures benefit from making a spectacle of celebrity deaths, and their reverence for the deceased can often feel exploitative or performative.

I hope you are inspired by Parton’s success and philanthropy, but please do not go down the rabbit hole of clicking every article about her and defending her legacy from online trolls as a kind of morbid tribute to her.

You can better honor her legacy by following her example and being kinder and more generous to the people in your community and beyond.

I chose to discuss this point now because Parton is as close to universally beloved as a person can be. Even so, I still suggest leaving the mourning to her close friends and family. We all experience enough personal tragedy without attaching our grief to people who do not know us.

If you decide to engage with a celebrity at the airport, I hope it ends up being a positive experience for both you and the celebrity.

But whether it goes great or poorly, remember celebrities will not weep by your casket because parasocial bonds are a one-way street.