A great story
My wife and I went to an event for author Neil Gaiman called "Gathering of the Gods" at the House on the Rock in Wisconsin. I was a poor graduate student, she a coffee barrista at Borders, and we didn't have enough money to do the whole shebang, so we only purchased tickets for one day.
We are both super excited because Mr. Gaiman is one of our favorite authors, so we pile up a ton of his books thinking "Cool, maybe we can get him to sign them!" We get there, have a great time, , my wife enters the costume contest and makes it to the final round, and everything is peachy. After some events, we start wandering the House on the Rock, and we see Mr. Gaiman. Then things go wrong.
My wife comes up to him with her books and asks him to sign them. He hesitates, and his assistant informs us that he cannot, because the book signing was the day before (remember, we didn't have enough money for the whole event), and if he signed ours he would have to sign for everyone. Mr. Gaiman was nice about it, but we were disappointed.
We go and eat and drink a bit, and my wife is very disappointed (as am I, but I think it hit her harder). We were pretty embarrassed also. So we are sitting and chatting, and all of sudden a man slides up to us and says, covertly, "If you still have your books, take them to that corner and wait a minute, and I'll sign them." My wife goes over there, Mr. Gaiman signs our books, chats with us, takes pictures, and is just the most genuinely nice person ever. All disappointment is erased and we have a wonderful, wonderful evening.