Bab By: Alyssa Lasko

For those of you who took Honors English last year, remember how Mrs. Brennan told us all we would do pretty bad on her first quiz? And then we all freaked out cause she accidentally put the grade of how well we did on the note taking part, which was out of five points, instead of the actual quiz, which was out of 40 points, so the highest you could have gotten was a 5/40 (a 12.5%)? What makes this memory so... memorable for me is the fact that my dad, upon hearing my atrocious assumed 12.5% quiz grade, subsequently picked up a megaphone (you read that right, megaphone!) and said (read: yelled) "You suck" directly to my face.

(We don't even have the megaphone anymore!! Where did it come from? Why did we have it? Where is it now? Who knows!)

Side note, I was the one who voluntary told my dad about my 12.5% English grade, he doesn't even know what website Sparta uses for grades and stuff (probably). 

(And, in all seriousness, he was just messing with me. And, you know, introducing me to the next bane of my existence a.k.a the megaphone.)

With that said, here's a little, short bio of Bab! 

(What a flattering photo! P.S "Bab" is dad but with b's because my younger sister had an internal conflict when it came to the alphabet when she was little.)

My dad is known for being pretty good with words, he's excellent with coming up with rhymes on the spot and has some great quotes. His co-worker even has a (supposed secret) running list! I made the mistake of saying a couple of them in front of my friend once and now she won't stop saying them. I'll spare you the boredom for reading a long list so here's my favorite two:

"Kick the tires, light the fires!"

"Lift up your skirt and be a man!"

Obviously you can tell he took many Honors classes in High School, right?

Another thing about Bab is that he likes to give those life speeches. You know, the ones that are melodramatic, have the wind blowing, and random beams of light? Well, one time he was giving one of these life speeches and he was getting real into it so he wasn't looking where he was going and he walked right into a side mirror of a truck! I laughed so hard for so long, I must have gotten a great ab workout that day.

Bab is also a pretty handy guy. He has an odd obsession with air conditioners, cars, fans, TVs, sawzalls, generators, electronics, and basically anything that he can upgrade or use for mass destruction. My mom said my dad's like a caged tiger when it rains or when we're on vacation because he can't stand not working for more than 30 minutes. Whenever we go to my Grandmother's house he spends as much time as he can running around fixing everything. If he doesn't, it leads to him doing stuff like playing golf inside our condo and almost hitting our uncle in the face with a golf ball.

That leads me to my next topic.

Bab is also very... dangerous.

There is not a day that goes by where I do not see my life flash before my eyes when I am under the same roof as that man. Whether it be from going 70 mph on a road that has a 30 mph speed limit, being shot at with fireworks, getting ticks flicked onto me, being forced on life threatening hikes, death from dangerously over salted food, being subjected to help out in whatever science experiment he is definitely unqualified for, or being lost when I am only two years old (ok not all of this happened to me alone but it did happen to me and my sisters), Bab has really walked on thin ice a lot. Oh, wait he wasn't the one who fell into a lake in the middle of the winter, that was me! And I, of course, was under his supervision.

Wow, what a guy!

(Taken at our Grandmother's house, look how antsy he looks!)

Also, at this time, I'd also like to introduce my mom, 

(As you can see, 30 years ago she was in a rock band.)

and my younger sister.

(I photo-shopped her for a photography project.)