Michael J. Fox speaking at a Q&A with James Lipton (not in photos) and the Stanley Cup (partly in photos; at one point MJF touched it and then asked if he was allowed to do that. and then he touched it again), at the NHL store in New York on the 3rd of May 2013, 6:45 pm.
He talked mostly about hockey stuff. I barely registered what he said because my brain was too busy thinking ‘OMG MJF’, and ironically someone asked him who his favourite hockey player was, and he said Bobby Orr, and gave that anecdote about meeting him and playing a hockey game with him (the same story that was in one of his books, can’t remember which), and how at their initial meeting he was so stoked to meet the guy that he couldn’t remember a word he said, and I thought it was so relevant to me right then;
They allowed questions from the audience at the end. People mostly asked hockey stuff; one little boy asked him what his number was when he played hockey as a kid, and he said it was usually 7. Someone asked what Alex P. Keaton’s favourite hockey team would be. MJF said that he didn’t think Alex would want to get messed up with that stuff.
Then it was over, and the guards stepped in and said “straight to the car”, and they shuttled MJF right out the door, not letting him stop for any fan interaction whatsoever even though there were only about 7 of us who wanted autographs.
It’s still good to have seen my favourite actor in the flesh, though. The closest I got was probably 2 or 3 metres, but it felt oddly normal. I wasn’t as hyper as I feared I might have been; I was really calm. But throughout it I also felt like I was waiting for something magical to happen that… never really did.