by Jim Gaffigan
Well, guess what? I am a parent now, and I am still not cool. I also see a lot of former cool kids trying to be cool parents, but it’s not working. Why? Because parenting is not cool. You know what else isn’t cool? Trying to be cool. Sorry, everyone, you’re never going to be Gwen Stefani or David Beckham. Hell, they probably aren’t even considered cool anymore. Cool is subjective. Were that kid’s parents really cool? I bet he didn’t think so. Actually, back then, I only remember one kid ever saying to me that his parents were “cool,” but what he meant was that they smoked pot with him. Even then, I thought his parents were total degenerates.
Since becoming a dad, I have become painfully aware of the obsession with cool parenting. There are three-year-olds decked out head to toe in designer clothes. I have to assume a few of these three-year-olds didn’t pick out their own outfits. Some of them might not even have credit cards. There are magazines, blogs, and websites obsessed with “cool parenting” that recommend the latest thing to feed your child, cool furniture for your child, and cool things to do with your child if you want them to be around children of other cool parents. I understand the aspiration. The fifteen-year-old me really relates. What I find odd is that the people who frequent and post comments on some of these parenting websites seem like some of the un-coolest people in the universe. I used to have a lot of faith in humanity before the advent of the website “comment” section. These brave, anonymous parents shamelessly gossip and snipe at one another, bragging about how smart and cool their kids are and mocking people who don’t share their “cool” opinions. Newsflash: High school is over. You are not cool. “Cool” is a ridiculous concept.
I find it hysterical that “ironic” is currently considered “cool” when, in fact, “cool” itself is what is ironic. Even in the ’70s and ’80s, the television show Happy Days was aware of the irony of “cool.” The cool character on Happy Days was “the Fonz,” and he was ridiculous. His office was in a men’s bathroom. That’s not only not cool, that’s not even sanitary. Maybe our society’s confusion about “cool” actually originates from Happy Days. Most of us watched it when we were too young to understand sarcasm. We all actually thought that “the Fonz” was the coolest guy in the world because that’s what the TV told us. That guy who can hit a jukebox and make it play or snap his fingers and have two chicks at his side is cool! I want to be like that guy. The guy with the greasy hair who hangs out by a urinal.
To the Fonz’s credit, “cool” originated as a term meant to describe someone who ignores the conventions of the social mainstream. They just don’t care what other people think and do their own thing. Now everyone is looking to blogs and media outlets to find out what’s cool? If you are looking to see what everyone else is doing to try to be cool, you are probably not cool.
As if journalists know anything about being cool. In high school, if you wanted to find out what was cool, the last people you would ask would be the kids that worked on the high school newspaper: “Hey, guys, can you tell me somewhere cool to go this weekend? You know, someplace where you guys are not going to be?” I know this is true, because I worked on the school newspaper.
It is also ironic that in high school, the jocks were cool and the nerds were not cool. Now the nerds are the tastemakers. The nerds are rich and successful, and those jocks are dumb divorced guys with beer bellies. By the way, in high school, I also played football and, yes, I have a beer belly. Jeannie can’t divorce me. We are Catholic. Thank you, Jesus.
So parents who want to be considered cool, give it up. Even if you put your three-year-old in a fedora, we all know you are still getting barfed on and wiping noses and butts like the rest of us. No matter how cool you try to be, we all know you are spending more time in the bathroom than the Fonz. “Ayyy!”
The Pharaoh and the Slave
When I was growing up, I always assumed my father had six children so he could have a sufficient lawn crew. Every Saturday, my dad would have me and all my siblings out doing yard work, landscaping and what seemed like arbitrarily excavating our yard. He would say things like “Today I’d like to move this hill.” At best, it felt like torture. At worst, it felt like slavery. I remember thinking that dads were the ultimate bosses. All-powerful. In charge of everything. The father was the pharaoh, and we were the slaves building his pyramids. I had no idea at the time that I was not the slave, but actually the master. My father was the slave. Okay, maybe not the slave, but he was certainly not the master.
Now that I am a father myself, I know that powerlessness is the defining characteristic of fatherhood. This begins with the pregnancy. Men spend their whole lives being active. We evolved as hunters. “Me get job, me get girl, me get girl pregnant. Now me shut mouth and wait for girl to tell me what to do.” As expectant fathers, we become silent spectators. Passive participants in a series of external events over which we have zero control.
Sure, you help when you can. You rub shea butter on your partner’s belly. You eat like you are pregnant. You buy those tiny diapers that are the size of an iPhone and that will only fit the baby for three days. You eat some more. You attend those bogus birthing classes and learn support techniques that you forget the second you’re out the door, because you have to get something to eat. Really, you don’t know what you are doing or what you should be doing, so you mostly try to stay out of the way and eat. Well, that’s what I did.
While your baby is being born, you witness the most amazing thing that will happen in your life, but you’re not physically participating. During the delivery, you feel like one of those NASA engineers sitting in front of some panel of switches and buttons watching the space shuttle take off. This is your baby, but today you are just the engineer in a short-sleeve dress shirt with a pocket protector and 1970s government-issued glasses helplessly watching the defining moment of the thing that you helped create. Doing the countdown but not launching the rocket.
During labor, the father-to-be is always attempting to justify his presence in the room: “Hey, I’m the dad. I’m on the team. I caused this. Well, I’m in the way, so I will just stand here in the corner and take some pictures.”
You want to be there for emotional support, yet everything you say or do ends up irritating the mother-to-be while she is in labor. WARNING: Labor is not the time to try out new jokes on her or eat chips and guacamole with extra garlic. I don’t understand why she wouldn’t want one bite. Anytime is a good time for guacamole, right?
The tradition of letting the father “cut the cord” is such an obvious attempt to fabricate a reason for the father to even be there: “Let’s find something for this incompetent boob to do.” They present the duty of cutting the cord as if it’s a magic bonding ceremony. In reality, you’re just the dorky guy snipping the ribbon in front of a new building that you didn’t build. It’s ironic that the man whose virility caused this whole situation is now the most impotent person in the room.
The umbilical cord is the conduit of life for the unborn baby. It is connected to the placenta, which is the entire source of food and oxygen for the unborn child. When baby takes his first breath, there is no longer any reason for him to be connected to the cord. Who better than the father to be the one to release his child from the life source of the womb and transition him to the outer world? After all, you are the one that’s going to push them out of the house when they turn thirty. You are handed the scissors and given the job of trying to saw through the slimy human USB cord without screwing something up. And, by the way, you can’t screw it up. They wouldn’t give you that much responsibility. The cord is clamped already, so it’s not even a medical procedure. It’s a symbol. “Now you will symbolically release the child from the mother’s care … and then immediately return him to his mother’s care for the next thirty years.”
After the delivery, you end up being the overzealous security guard who originally wanted to be a cop: “Oh, you want to see the mother and new baby? Let me see some ID. Did you wash your hands?” You pretend you�
��re in charge, but you mostly feel completely powerless. You’ll feebly watch the baby and mother of your child lie there recovering, knowing that anything you do that is not mom or baby related may be viewed as insulting. Should I get her food? A blanket? Would that be overbearing? Should I get me food? A blanket? Would that be selfish? I guess I’ll just stare. Men used to pass out cigars in the waiting room. Now we just stand there feeling about as useful as a cigar in a hospital waiting room. We accept the congratulations from friends and return to our security guard post unaware that we’ve just been appointed Vice President.
Vice President
As a dad, you are Vice President. You are part of the Executive Branch of the family, but you are the partner with the weaker authority. In your children’s eyes, you mostly fulfill a ceremonial role of attending pageants and ordering pizza.
I’m never the first choice. My kids don’t even mask it, which I respect them for. “Let’s see, the crabby guy with the scratchy beard or that warm soft lady that tells us stories for eight hours?” It’s not even close.
Jeannie is Bill Clinton, and I am Al Gore. She “feels their pain,” and I’m the dork reminding them to turn off the lights. I’m always Joe Biden saying the wrong thing. When I read a story to my children, I know how Dan Quayle felt when he spelled potato wrong. Most dads know they are Vice Presidents and are fine with it. Being “President Mom” is a position outside of our pay grade or skill set. We can’t breastfeed, and we wouldn’t know how to braid hair anyway.
Other times, we dads are presented as the “enforcer” Vice President, the Dick Cheney. “If you don’t listen to me, I’m going to tell your father.” Suddenly the lame-duck dad is Darth Vader. I don’t know how kids keep it straight. They must think, “So if we don’t behave, you’ll report our behavior to that guy you yell at and boss around the house? Well, that’s not threatening at all.”
Most of the time, I don’t even care about the crimes my children have supposedly committed while under my wife’s watch. However, I’ll still put on the stern-father face. “Your mother told me you were climbing on furniture and when she asked you to stop, you didn’t listen to her. Is that true?” My children will “act” apologetic and frightened, but it feels false because, in reality, my children don’t fear me the way I feared my father. When I have discipline talks with my children, it almost seems like we are shooting a scene from Growing Pains.
Occasionally, decisions are gratuitously placed in the “Ask Your Dad” category, under the pretense that your opinion is valued, but you know better than to go against your President. “Yes, sure. Why not? It’s absolutely fine with me … unless your mom didn’t want me to say that … in that case, absolutely no! I forbid it.” That’s when you realize you not only have no idea what you are doing, you also have no principles. You have become the “God help us if something happens to the President” Vice President.
My Dad, the Professional Wrestler
When I first became a father, I remember thinking that my ultimate goal was to just not make the same mistakes that my father made. Then I was comforted by the thought that there was no way I would be able to afford all that booze. My father may not have been the best dad, but without the comparison to him, I would probably feel even guiltier, so in a way he made me a better dad.
Not too many dads of my father’s generation were great dads. Truth be told, my dad probably tried his best. He was a good provider. It wasn’t like any other dads were reading stories or picking up kids from school either. My dad was of a pre–Phil Donahue time. Back in the ’70s, aside from putting food on the table, most dads essentially did nothing to raise their kids. I should also mention that in my dad’s era, “putting food on the table” never actually involved putting food on the table. That was women’s work. Dads didn’t put food on the table. They didn’t put a diaper on a baby, and they didn’t put a kid in a bath. They also didn’t actually “bring home the bacon.” Nor did they shop for the bacon or cook the bacon. They just ate the bacon. Who wouldn’t? Bacon is delicious. The amazing thing is not that they didn’t do any of these things, it’s that they didn’t feel guilty about it at all. I have my own baby sling, and I still feel guilty all the time.
Smiling through the guilt.
I’m told many young children view their dad as a superhero. Someone brave and strong who will protect them from bad guys and is able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Not me. I will always remember my dad in the mythical proportions normally reserved for professional wrestlers. Like those cartoonish champions of the ring, all my dad’s habits and mannerisms seemed exaggerated for my amazement, entertainment, and frustration. He’d enter the room with a cloud of intimidation that rivaled André the Giant stepping onto the canvas. To this day, an abrupt silencing cough scares the hell out of me. I feared him. His temper. My father’s size was not overwhelming, but his presence was enormous. He could shake a room with a never-ending pause. He could cut my knees out with his evil eye. I could feel the vibrations from him walking on those heavy heels, smell his cigarette in the air, and suddenly fear would fill my stomach. My siblings feared my dad. Everyone feared my dad. I remember my one friend deciding if he should come over based on whether or not my father was home. My dad once shot a man for snoring! Okay, he didn’t, but to the sixteen-year-old me, he was the type of person who would have if he lived in the Wild West and had a gun and someone was snoring or breathing near him.
My dad was not mean. He was controlling and demanding. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He was not above enlisting my friends into the family yard work detail. He certainly did not tolerate moping.
DAD: [Cough.] Get out there and be in a good mood.
ME: But, Dad, it’s a funeral.
DAD: [Cough.] I don’t care. Now go stand near the casket. I want to get some pictures.
My father never really understood technology. As an adult, if I wasn’t home when he called, he would leave the same message on my answering machine.
DAD: [Beeeeep.] [Cough.] Hello. Hello? Hello! [Long pause.] Tell Jim his dad called!
I always wanted to call him back and say, “Yeah, Dad, my answering machine told me you called. Then the toaster told me I was hungry.”
The fatigue of being the father of six set in by the time I was a teenager. The night before I went to college, my dad sat me down.
DAD: [Cough.] Now, Jim, I’m not sending you to college so you can get drunk and flunk out.
ME: Well, then I’m not going. You’re going to have to send a neighbor.
Of course, that’s not what I said. That is what I thought, but I didn’t want to get verbally body slammed. My dad could be warm and generous, but he always seemed to be treating people to things they didn’t necessarily want: “[Cough.] Tomorrow we are going to get up at five a.m. and sit on a boat for twelve hours in the blistering heat until your head turns a bright beet-red. Happy birthday!”
Every year for our birthday, our dad would take us out to dinner. We could pick any restaurant in town, and he would take us there. Any restaurant at all, as long as it was Giovanni’s, my father’s favorite restaurant. Every year, it seemed like the same conversation.
DAD: [Cough.] This year for your birthday, your mother and I want to take you out to dinner. Just the three of us. Where would you like to go?
ME: Thanks. I was thinking House of Kobe.
DAD: You don’t want to go to Giovanni’s?
ME: We went there last year. We always go there. How about House of Kobe?
DAD: I think your mother wants to go to Giovanni’s.
ME: Well, it’s my birthday. I’d like to go to House of Kobe, if that’s okay.
DAD: Fine. [Cough.] We’ll go to House of Kobe.
Hours later, we would be in the car, my parents seated in the front, with me in the back. My dad would look at me in the rearview mirror.
DAD: You wanted to go to Giovanni’s, right?
ME: Uh, sure.
I would get frustrated and occasion
ally challenge my dad, but I always lived in fear. I remember my mother telling me, “You’re never going to change him.” To my mother and siblings, challenging my father was a pointless, losing battle. Why kick the hornet’s nest? Why risk getting him mad? After all, he would shoot a man for snoring.
My mother and father died many years ago. Thanks for bringing it up. Time has turned my mother into something of a saint in my memory. Mostly because she stayed married to my dad. Actually she really was an amazing mother. Time has also softened my view of my father, but somehow I still fear him. The clink of ice in a glass or the smell of cigarettes still makes me stand a little straighter.
My dad, my brothers, and I out celebrating after my dad shot a man for snoring.
It’s actually unfair to characterize my father, or anyone for that matter, by only their dark side. I certainly wouldn’t want to be described by only the stupid and buffoonish things I’ve done. I’m sure I have my own Giovanni’s. As a teenager, I did view my father as this brutish, selfish, controlling Hulk Hogan, but now I see a bigger picture. My dad was a strict but compassionate man who cared deeply about his family, coworkers, and community. My dad never left my mother’s side for an entire year as she lost her battle with ovarian cancer. I loved my father. Most people did. He did try his best. He did provide for his family. He taught me many things and gave me a work ethic that made me who I am today: a guy who would throw his own father under the bus in a book about parenting.
