I'll go ahead and tell mine. My favorite human being in the world was my grandpa. He was born in eastern Colorado to a loving mother and a drunk of a father. His father ditched the family and his mother couldn't support the kids on her own, so they ended up in an orphanage, which he and his brother and sister would be in and out of for years. He used his mother's last name for a long time, until his father re-entered his Life when he was older. He went to the University of Denver where he met my grandma, who was from eastern Kansas. Both of them were involved in music and enjoyed singing together. He then continued post-graduate studies at the University of Iowa. After that, WWII broke out and he was sent to war where he was the navigator of a bomber plane. Flying over Germany, his plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire and he suffered a shrapnel injury to his leg, but they successfully navigated the plane to safety. After the war, he stayed in the military as an engineer, moving the family all over the country, from Passaic, NJ to Cincinnati, OH, to Huntsville, AL (this was in the 60's, mind you), and finally to Houston, TX, where they settled outside of town. My grandpa was a very crafty (he had a huge wood shop like something out of Pinocchio) so he and my uncle built a house for my grandparents to retire in with their bare hands. In Houston, he worked as an electrical engineer on the lunar rover that drove on the Moon while my grandma taught English and music. After he retired from NASA, he taught math to prison inmates at the Huntsville Penitentiary, the prison with the single-most executions in the United States. In 1994, he was diagnosed with liver cancer and died in the hospital the day before my birthday.

It's not hard to see why he was my favorite person in the world as a kid. Not only was he very interesting, with so many stories to tell, he was also an incredibly warm and gentle man, and incredibly tall. About 6 foot 3. To me, he seemed like a giant. Not just in terms of size, but in terms of character. The scope of his Life was enormous. This got me wondering what kind of people others out there had in their family. A biopic about my grandfather's Life would rival Forest Gump but I'm betting there are others who my grandpa's would pale in comparison to.