by Jim Gaffigan
On the walk over, I noticed Tom was being very quiet. When I asked if there was anything wrong, he stopped, looked down, and chuckled. “You won’t understand till you’re a parent.”
“I won’t understand what?”
He condescendingly explained, “You will rue the day you took that nap.”
Rue the day? I’ve rued a lot of days in my life, but I’ve never rued about a nap. It dawned on me at that moment that the importance of the adjoining rooms was that the baby needed his own room and the other room was actually for the four of us. It was meant to serve as a “break room” from attending to the baby, an escape from the arduous chore of parenting. Again, I apologized but couldn’t help but think if the rules had been explained at the beginning of the trip, this situation could have been avoided. It seemed to me that the logical thing would have been to outline this arrangement before I had screwed up the “break room” situation. An even more logical thing would have been to get three rooms and just admit that the baby needed his own room. I was pretty sure this would have allowed us to escape a whole lot of awkwardness, but then again, I’d never been abducted by aliens.
Tom accepted my apology, and the next day we drove back on the long desert highway. It was a relatively quiet drive except for the CD of baby music. “Ding-a-ding-dong, ding-a-ding-dong.” Suddenly out of nowhere, a huge deer ran out in front of the car. Tom swerved to avoid it, but the deer froze like, well, like a deer in the headlights. We slammed into the deer at fifty miles an hour. All of us screamed in shock. The car was totaled. The deer ran off injured into the desert. Aside from the deer, everyone was fine, thank God, especially the baby. He didn’t wake up from his nap. “Ding-a-ding-dong, ding-a-ding-dong.”
“Drinking the Kool-Aid”
I remember looking at people holding babies on airplanes, thinking, “Weirdo. Why would you do that to yourself?” I didn’t get it. I essentially looked at parents like they were in a cult, and, frankly, I was right. Parenting is a cult.
This goes way beyond the sleep deprivation and being poorly dressed. The following are characteristics of a cult from the American Family Foundation. I’ve provided some clarity with the [brackets].
• The group members [parents] display an excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment to an individual [their child].
• The group members [parents] are preoccupied with bringing in new members.
• The group members [parents] are preoccupied with making money.
• The leadership [child] induces guilt feelings in members [parents] in order to control them.
• Members’ [parents’] subservience to the group [children] causes them to cut ties with family and friends, and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group.
• Members [parents] are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group [children].
• Members [parents] are encouraged or required to live [in the suburbs] and/or socialize [playdates] only with other group members [parents].
This may be hysterical or frightening to you, but it’s only half true. Yes, on the surface parents seem like brainwashed zombies, but we are not. We are not. We love parenting. We love it. You will love it too. Come join us. Join us. You must join us! Please take this pamphlet and watch this Baby Einstein video. Isn’t it great? You will grow to love it. It will give you peace. (Help me, I’m trapped.) JOIN US!
To be fair, the intangible benefits of parenting are hidden beneath this scary facade. When I didn’t have kids, I didn’t get it, and I shouldn’t have. I had never fought in the Vietnam War and had dinner in Paris on the same day. I had no context to understand the casualties or the romance a parent feels on the same day. I never knew the joy of successfully putting a two-year-old down for a nap. Well, I still don’t, but that’s beside the point. For people without kids, parenting is just weird. It can’t be articulated. You have to be in the cult to understand it. Obviously, I’m not trying to push you into anything. Make up your own mind in your own time. But the spaceship is coming on Thursday.
Family-Friendly
I am considered a clean comedian. This basically means I rarely curse and don’t work blue. I never made an intentional decision to be clean; it just ended up that way. When you are discussing mini-muffins in a stand-up act, it’s not really necessary to curse or bring sex into the material. Occasionally a reviewer will describe me as “family-friendly,” which always makes me cringe.
As a parent, I know “family-friendly” is really just a synonym for bad. Family-friendly restaurants serve horrible food. Family-friendly hotels have the charm of a water park. Really, anything with the word family before it is bad. Have you been in a “family restroom”? They always seem like they should be connected to a gas station.
The most frightening aspect of “family-friendly” is that it means other families will be present. Other families will by definition have children, which means more screaming. Children have a tendency to behave as poorly as the most poorly behaved kid in the room. The laws of physics dictate that if there is a kid screaming and running in the hallway of a hotel, all the other children will scream and run in the hallway of the hotel.
Probably the only thing worse than the description “family-friendly” is when something is labeled “kid-friendly.” Kid-friendly implies there is no consideration for what an adult might need or want. It’s not just subquality. It’s horrible. It may as well just be called “adult-unfriendly.” Maybe the word to be cautious of is friendly. When you think about it, friendly does communicate some creepiness. It’s usually preceded by the word too. If someone gets “too friendly,” I’m usually suspicious and certainly don’t want to be friends with them. Many times people will describe places as not being “kid-friendly.” That’s enough for me. Whenever I hear that a restaurant is “not kid-friendly,” I always think, “That place must be awesome! Let’s get a sitter.”
Have Children:
THE CONDITION
Having five children has really made me appreciate the more important things in life. Particularly the sublime state of being alone. Of course, now I’m never alone. I have five kids who I love with all my heart. Even the one that gave me the title to this book.
This was written by my former son.
The phrase “I have children” is always present tense. They are always with me. Even when I am by myself, I “have children.” When I travel I “have children” who I feel guilty being away from. If I’m in the bathroom enjoying some of Daddy’s private time, I “have children” who will knock on the bathroom door. “Daddy, what are you doing in there?” As if I’m being rude. I “have children” like I “have male pattern baldness.” It is an incurable condition, and I have it. Symptoms include constant fatigue, inability to sleep, and, of course, extreme sleep disruption.
I have become incredibly paranoid around people without kids because I “have children.” I feel like it makes me an outcast to people without kids. I watch the faces of single people in their twenties after I bring up that I have children. I imagine them taking a small step backward as if to avoid contagion, with a look of “Sorry to hear that” on their face. Like I naively volunteered to contract leprosy, forever quarantining myself from the world of having fun by having children.
Of course my fear of being rejected by friends without kids is totally unfounded. I have become a hypochondriac about my condition, probably because of the way I viewed people with children when I was a single guy without children. I always thought if I stood too close to someone with kids, I would accidentally slip onto some conveyor belt, get delivered to the suburbs, and start going to bed at a reasonable hour.
But in actuality, my friends without kids have expressed admiration for my courage in dealing with my ailment: “You’re so brave!” “Hang in there!” “You’re going to get through this!” There is of course some ribbing from my single friends about my not being able to have fun with them by hanging out in a bar all night. I often
hear the “whip” sound when I excuse myself from a late-night revelry session. I’ll head home to my own late-night revelry session. I’ll still have fun and, like my friends, I’ll also wake up feeling like a truck drove over me. So I know I’m not missing anything.
Of course, it’s not the type of fun my single friends have. I wouldn’t expect them to have that kind of fun until they catch the bug and they too have children and discover what having fun really is. And by “having fun,” I mean “having children” to make you appreciate the sublime state of being alone. I mean, I think it’s sublime. I don’t remember. I’m not alone often enough to remember things.
The Lone Ranger
I do remember that when I was single, I was a loner by choice. I ate alone, went to movies alone, and even spent time by myself alone. The thought of a roommate to the single me was absurd. Now I have many roommates. I have an eight-year-old, a six-year-old, a three-year-old, a one-year-old, and I don’t think I’ve even met the other one yet. Hey, there are five of them! Five kids may seem overwhelming to you, but how do you think I feel? Ten years ago, I could barely get a date, and now my apartment is literally crawling with babies. It’s like I left some peanut butter out overnight.
Not surprisingly, I never imagined I would get married, let alone have children. I suppose I had a romantic notion of having children someday, but, then again, I also had a romantic notion of being an astronaut, and, honestly, being an astronaut felt like a more realistic expectation. Aside from my physiology, nothing in my childhood, teenage years, or early adulthood indicated to me that I would someday have children. Obviously many, many things indicated I would likely be an astronaut. Well, okay, I drank Tang once.
I was the youngest of six kids. Yes, I came from a big family, but really nothing about being the youngest of six kids prepares you for parenthood. It only prepares you to be parented. I was never a babysitter or a camp counselor. I never had a younger cousin or even a neighbor with younger kids. The closest I ever came to a little kid was when I watched the The Cosby Show and Raven-Symoné came to live with the Huxtables for a few seasons.
Nothing about my career choice led me to believe I would get married and have children. Being a comedian is a nomadic, nocturnal existence that goes against the basic normalcy and consistency required of being a healthy participant in society, let alone being a healthy participant in raising a child. There were times in my life when I had one thing to do all day, but I still couldn’t get to it. “I gotta go to the post office, but I’d probably have to put on pants. And they’re only open till five. Looks like I’m going to have to do that next week.” Comedians are generally introspective outsiders who identify more with the misfit toys from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer than any “normal” father portrayed on television.
Most stand-up comedians are well aware that they are not normal. There is nothing normal about going onstage and making strangers laugh. Try it sometime. It’s really weird. We are natural contrarians. Tell a comedian to do something and they will most likely do the opposite just to see how you react. “You should play football like your brother”; “You should go into finance like your father”; “You should write an intelligent, funny, and well-crafted book like Bill Cosby.”
Just when I was resigned to the reality of a future of being the proud weird uncle who lived in New York City, I met Jeannie. Jeannie was unlike any woman I had ever met or have yet to meet. She was part girl next door, part superstar, part insane-asylum inpatient. Jeannie was the oldest of nine children, and when I met her she was directing a Shakespearean play with a hip-hop score featuring about fifty inner-city kids. For free. Here was this funny, sexy, smart woman who was passionate about her art and, for some reason, children. Working with kids inspired Jeannie’s creativity, and being with her inspired me. It was an amazing relationship. Jeannie literally wanted to take care of me, and in turn I had this crazy, almost biological desire to provide her with, well, someone to take care of.
For the first time in my life, I felt like I could spend the rest of my life with someone. Heck, I could even have a child with this person. Even if I knew nothing about kids, Jeannie could just handle everything, right? I already knew I wouldn’t have to pay her. Eventually I tricked Jeannie into marrying me. It was at that point that I discovered Jeannie is someone who gets pregnant looking at babies.
So now I am a loner with a chronic and acute case of children. I am learning to live with my condition as well as encourage others who have found themselves in a similar state. Therefore I have organized an annual Sleep-a-Thon to help raise money for research. If you would like to sponsor me, and I am sure you do, please pledge $100 for every one hour I sleep. You will be doing a great humanitarian service, and I will be a better father because of your kindness and support. It’s a win-win situation. I realize this sounds like you would just be paying me to sleep, but it’s more. Together we can make the condition of having children a lot more bearable. Well, more bearable for me and my bank account. Thank you for your generosity.
Bedridden with children.
Anti-Family
I enjoy posting blurbs and observations on Twitter and Facebook about my children and parenting. Mostly I post about how ill-equipped and overwhelmed I am as a parent and how babies for some reason don’t like the taste of wasabi. The blurbs are meant to be (hopefully) funny, silly, and/or insightful. Some of these observations will lean toward a dark, sarcastic take on the prison sentence that is parenthood. In a family-friendly way, of course.
Occasionally I receive comments that associate my musings with being anti-family, or somehow dissuading people from having kids. These occasional comments are so absurd they always make me laugh. I wonder if my rant on not wanting to work out is contributing to the obesity epidemic. Maybe I’m also increasing cake sales. I never knew I had so much power.
Anti-family? This could not be further from the truth. I love being a parent and enjoy finding the humor in parenting. If you complain about how you spend your Saturdays taking your kid to birthday parties, that means you are taking your kid to birthday parties. If you complain about how hard it is to get your kid to read, it means you are trying to get your kid to read. If you are complaining about your kid not helping around the house, that means you have a fat, lazy kid. You joke about it. That’s how you deal. If parents don’t like being a parent, they don’t talk about being a parent. They are absent. And probably out having a great time somewhere. I have done extensive research and, almost universally, found that the people who view my blurbs and observations as “anti-family” are dicks. Failing and laughing at your own shortcomings are the hallmarks of a sane parent.
When you are handed your screaming newborn for the first time, you are simultaneously handed a license for gallows humor. The guy who invented the phrase “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” probably had a baby. And, for a moment, probably contemplated throwing the baby out.
I Confess
I wasn’t ready for the guilt of being a parent. I was raised Catholic, so guilt is a familiar friend. Guilt is as much a part of the Catholic culture as is rooting for Notre Dame. I grew up with a “God is watching you, so you better not make him mad” mentality. I felt guilty for feeling good, for feeling bad, and for feeling nothing. Attending Confession was supposed to alleviate some of the guilt, but I always ended up feeling guilty for not telling the priest everything I felt guilty about, so I stopped going to Confession. Then I felt guilty that I stopped going to Confession. That’s a lot of guilt. Just when I thought that nothing could top “Catholic Guilt,” I became acquainted with “Parental Guilt,” which totally puts “Catholic Guilt” to shame. Sorry, Catholic Guilt. Now I feel guilty for shaming you. Well, at least now you know how I feel.
No matter how hard you try to be a good parent, you always know deep down that you could do more. I feel guilty when I travel out of town to do shows. I feel guilty when I’m in town and I don’t spend every single moment with my children. I feel guilty
when I’m spending time with my children and I am not doing something constructive toward their intellectual development. I feel guilty when I feed them unhealthy food they like. I feel guilty when I feed them healthy food they don’t like. I feel guilty when I drop them off at school. I feel guilty when I pick them up at school. I feel guilty mostly for writing this book instead of spending time with them. Great, now I’ve probably made you feel guilty for reading this book. I feel guilty about that now, too. Sorry. Probably what I feel most guilty about is how many times I have used the word guilty in this essay. Again, let me sincerely apologize. Wow. I feel so much better after this confession. You were right, Catholic Guilt. Thank you.
Happy Days Are Here Again
I’ve never really been considered cool. It always felt like an unattainable goal. Maybe it was my pale skin or pudgy features, but I never looked cool in a leather jacket or a pair of shorts. Even when I was wearing them at the same time. I realized long ago I was never destined to grace the cover of Rolling Stone.
This is not to say that cool wasn’t important to me as a teenager. Growing up, “cool” felt like an assignment that I was always turning in late. I wasn’t “un-cool,” which in high school means “a walking target of mockery and ridicule,” but that was always a looming fear. I still was allowed to hang out with some cool kids because I occasionally said something funny. I remember thinking that one of those cool kids had really “cool” parents. They weren’t incredibly wealthy, but his mom and dad showed up at everything looking exceptionally stylish. They threw a Christmas party every year that all the other parents wanted to be invited to. They never seemed frazzled or appeared to get upset about anything. They always had the latest gadgets and went on amazingly stylish vacations. They dressed their kid in the hippest clothes possible. Their kid was “cool” by default, which in high school means “royalty.” I remember thinking, “My parents are so un-cool. If they were cool, I too would be cool. If I’m dumb enough to have kids when I grow up I am definitely going to be a ‘cool’ parent.”
