When Ty Pennington ran into his dad at the age of five, he didn't realize who the man was. In "Life to the Extreme," Pennington wrote that his first memory of meeting his father happened while he was in kindergarten. He and his older brother Wynn were having the time of their lives playing at an arcade center. A man approached them without giving an introduction. To their delight and surprise, he offered the boys more quarters so they could continue playing the pinball machine. 

Pennington wrote that the man returned "several times" to check on the boys and give them more quarters. That's when their mother returned from the next-door jazz club to get the boys. When she asked her young son if he knew who the kind, quarter-wielding stranger was, Pennington said he drew a blank. "Is he someone on the news?" he remembered asking her.

The answer hit much closer to home. "That's your father," his mother stated. As any five-year-old might be, Pennington was more concerned about getting back to playing his game than his chance encounter with his father. "'Cool,'" he recalls himself replying. "Can I have more quarters?"