We had a fan in the Wash. D.C. area - Harold (I'll withhold his last name) who was about as obnoxious as they come. He would call our rooms when we were in town and go, "Hi - this is Harold....(silence)" and we were expected to pick up the conversation from there. My best description of him at our shows is that he would lurk. He always wanted to be around us in just a creepy sort of way.
One time he came to Denver and he called Meri and me to see if we wanted to go to lunch with him. So we picked him up and drove him around town a bit, stopped for lunch and - I forget the details of how he wormed out of paying - but we ended up buying lunch.
I may have Meri jump in here - she quite often acted as a buffer between Harold and us. She'll remember the cruise ship story.
Then there were the Denver twins who collected anything related to the KT. One of them went to Australia to hunt down Dave Guard memorabilia. They would also lurk around at shows - just strange folks. I guess you'd call them over-zealous fans. And you really couldn't blow them off, but you'd try to find any reason to get away from them.
In general, tho, we have good fans. Most are very respectful and many we've got to know personally over the years. So another version of your question might be "when does a fan become a friend?" Many have.
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