by Jim Gaffigan
It’s not just the look, the cost, and the time involved in putting sunscreen on a child, it’s the battle. My kids have no idea why they would have to wait to have fun while they are smeared with chemicals all over their face and body. They scream. They cry. “It burns!” The process of applying sunscreen just highlights the preposterousness of raising pale kids on a planet that revolves around a hot burning star that emits poisonous UV rays. I can never tell if the concerned looks from strangers are because they think I am torturing my children or because I am dressed like an out-of-shape Superman at the beach. Does anyone know where I can get a red swim cape?
For some reason those bastards at Sports Illustrated didn’t think this was “cover worthy” for their swimsuit issue.
Learnin’ Them
Newborns arrive as a blank slate, a tabula rasa, or as I call them, dummies. Every parent must start from scratch and teach them everything. Kids have a whole lot of learning to do. Of course, not from me, because I also am a dummy. The apple doesn’t fall far from that thing it grows on. Luckily there are classes, activities, and, of course, school.
I really wasn’t prepared for the amount of classes offered to little children. When I was a kid, there was only preschool and watching television. Now, the moment after conception, there are classes specifically geared toward your fetus. For example, there is prenatal yoga. It’s a lot like a regular yoga, but it has the word prenatal before it.
Once your child is born, the “classes” for one- and two-year-olds run the gamut from pointless to useless. You are essentially paying an enormous amount of money to take your baby to some room in order to interact with them. Parents sit in a circle on the floor and sing horrible songs led by some well-intended struggling musician as the two-year-olds run around the room screaming and try to hit each other with the musical instruments that have been handed out. Toddler classes are no better. Toddler soccer is like watching a political discussion on cable news. It starts off serious and ends in embarrassment for all involved. “Waaaaah, he stole my ball!” Yeah, Jack, that’s the point of the game.
Luckily, as your child gets older, the good people that run these classes continue to take advantage of parental enthusiasm and guilt. When she was six, my daughter Marre was in a dance class that ended with a performance that parents had to pay $35 to get into. That’s right. I had to pay to see my six-year-old twirl around the stage for five minutes dancing a routine she learned in a class I paid for her to attend. The experience was made complete when I opened a fundraising letter from the “school” the next week.
Eventually children start actual school. When I was single, I never understood those commercials with the parents celebrating the end of summer. Now I understand that around mid-August, all the summer camps are over and you’ve run out of constructive things to do with your kid and you are desperate to get them out of the house. You’ve grown tired of your four-year-old pointing to words and asking, “What does this say?” Apparently it’s not okay to respond to them with, “It says, ‘Learn how to read.’ ” You don’t want to get rid of your children, but you do want to get rid of them for a couple of hours a day.
School seems like a perfect solution. Your precious child will learn something, and most important, you will be able to use the bathroom in peace. My only problem with school is when it starts and ends. Preschool boils down to a couple of hours a day for you to run errands. Elementary school starts at the ungodly hour of 8 a.m. Yes, in the morning. Given that a first grader can’t put on a T-shirt properly, they will need help at the even ungodlier hour of 7 a.m. Since I decided to raise an entire basketball team that can barely dress themselves, I have to wake up, too.
It’s not just getting them to schools, it’s what they can and cannot bring with them. When I first moved to New York City, I remember hearing stories of little children bringing guns to elementary school. Thankfully this trend is over, but it has been replaced by little children bringing far more dangerous weapons to school, such as the peanut butter sandwich. During the first weeks of school there are e-mails and e-mail reminders instructing parents that children are forbidden to bring anything containing nuts into the school. I realize a nut allergy is no joke, but I can’t think of one child growing up that had a nut allergy. Now they are more common than Velcro sneakers. Today it seems every other child has a nut allergy. Sometimes I think, “Why don’t they just open a school for children without nut allergies?” I’m all for small class size.
There was one paranoid teacher at our nursery school that would check the children’s backpacks as they came in to make sure no one smuggled in anything produced in a facility that may have possibly also produced something containing a trace of nuts or something that sounded like nuts. That sounds nuts, right? I was less shocked that they were checking the backpacks than I was shocked that nursery students had backpacks. Why a three-year-old would need a backpack is beyond me, but my daughter Katie has one, too. She has nothing in there. She’ll wear her backpack for a couple of minutes and then hand it off to me to carry up the stairs to her classroom. She has a kid in her class who has a backpack with wheels on it. Yes, wheels. That way, when the child gets tired of carrying the things they don’t need to nursery school, they can roll the bag of nothing around. Perfect.
I love the preschools that my children have attended, but they are not really “schools,” and this applies to all of them. No matter whether they are called a Preschool, a Nursery, or an Early Learning Center, they are either just a day care or a jail. That’s why I find it strange that they still hold parent-teacher conferences. The preschool parent-teacher conference always feels like a game of “serial killer or not serial killer?” You either find out your child is dismembering dolls or not dismembering dolls. This is not to say you don’t learn insightful things about your child: “Your daughter likes to sing and loves the color green.” Or see their artwork: “This is what your daughter scribbled last week. And this is what she scribbled this week.” Of course, you want to hear your kid is doing well and getting along with the other children, but unless your child is building bombs or purposely urinating in the Quiet Corner, the parent-teacher conference for a nursery student is incredibly pointless and could easily be done over e-mail.
Even as your children get older, the parent-teacher conference is always a strange experience. The conference is supposed to be all about the child, but somehow it ends up with you feeling like you are getting a report card on your parenting. You still want to know your child is doing well and you still want to see their work, but because I am an actor and comedian, it seems that these conferences always lead back to my occupation. “Well your daughter/son is very dramatic and loves to talk, which I guess is no surprise, given your occupation.” I’m not offended, but the implication that all improper behavior is the result of what I do for a living is rather absurd. As if a chatty five-year-old with a librarian mom would be a red flag. “We expected your child to just sit behind her desk and shush people. Maybe she needs Ritalin.”
Do you think they’re too little for school?
A Self-Portrait
Sometimes I feel I could spend my whole day dropping off and picking up my children, and, frankly, I do. No, really I do. I’m writing this right now on the subway after I dropped off my daughters at school. I tell you, some of the looks you get on the New York City subway. People act like they’ve never seen a typewriter before. This time-sucking parenting task is made even more complicated in New York City without a car. My kids are really going to be surprised to find out I’m charging them for all these back and forths.
I belong in NYC, but I don’t fit in NYC. I’ve lived in NYC for over twenty years, and I’m still treated like a tourist. I’ve had more than one cab driver ask me, “Where are you visiting from?” I always sense they are trying to take advantage of “the tourist.” I could be going five blocks, and I’ll have cab drivers ask if I’d like “to take the George Washington Bridge?” Yes, can we also swing by LaGuardia A
irport and pick up some groceries since I’m naive because I have blond hair? I’ve lived in NYC long enough to forget how truly white bread I look. Occasionally I’ll be on the subway and I’ll see some tourists from Iowa, and I’ll think to myself, “Ha ha! Check out those people.… Oh wait, that’s exactly what I look like.”
At this point, I’m comfortable not really fitting in anywhere in New York City. I’m not a hipster, I’m not a Wall Street guy, I’m not one of the fashionable, and I’m not even one of the antifashionable fashionables. I feel most comfortable among the homeless and the oddball characters on the Bowery. Of course, having our children going to schools near the Bowery would be too easy.
One year, we had two babies at home and two children at two different schools. Wait, it gets better. These two schools were in completely different parts of the city, and each provided their own special form of awkwardness for me. Marre was and is attending a fancy all-girls Catholic school on the Upper East Side. The school building is a former Vanderbilt mansion. Think Madeline and roughly as far away from our home on the Bowery as, well, as Paris, France, is from the Bowery. The school is a warm, amazing place populated by the daughters of the titans of finance and industry. The girls wear adorable light-blue uniforms and actually “stand in two straight lines.” When I go for drop-off or pickup, I’m usually the only parent in jeans wearing a baseball cap. I probably look unshowered because often I am. The other parents are very nice, but I usually feel that for some reason I’m being treated as the strange Downtowner who tells jokes for a living. Oh, wait, I guess I am.
Our second-oldest, Jack, was attending an amazing “play-based” preschool in the East Village. I still don’t exactly know what “play-based” means, but I just remember the classroom not having any chairs and me being one of the only parents without a tattoo or a child named after a spice. Housed in a turn-of-the-century brownstone, the school felt a little like the beacon to nineteenth-century street kids it once was. The other parents were very nice, but for some reason I usually felt like I was being treated as the strange white-bread guy who tells jokes for a living. Oh, wait, I guess I am.
Given I’m more of an afternoon guy than a morning guy. I often do the pickup portion of the round-trip. I would usually get Jack first in the East Village, then make the trek to the Upper East Side to get Marre. Every afternoon, I would enter the basement / locker-room area / greeting area of Jack’s school and check out the artwork the children had made hanging on the walls while I waited. It always feels a little generous calling a preschool’s artwork “artwork.”
Some “art” from “school.”
One afternoon I was looking at the “self-portraits” of the Pre-K class drawn on yellow construction paper. In one handcrafted picture, there was a toilet paper roll jutting out of the top area of the legs. I chuckled to an ironic T-shirted, fedora-wearing father, “That looks like a penis.” The father looked at me like I had just cut PBS funding, “What’s wrong with that?” I don’t know, everything?
At that point, Jack arrived with his teacher.
TEACHER: Oh, you saw Jack’s artwork.
ME: [Beat.] I did.
JACK: It’s my penis.
ME: I recognized it.
TEACHER: We encourage the kids to express themselves about their bodies without any shame or guilt.
ME: Good, good.
TEACHER: You’re welcome to take it home.
ME: Oh, I can’t wait to show Jack’s mom.
As we taxied up to the Upper East Side, Jack held his penis artwork on his lap and told me about his day. Well, actually, I asked him about his day, and he said he didn’t remember anything.
At Marre’s school, we waited with the other moms for dismissal in the grand lobby of the former mansion. Often pickups at Marre’s school feel like I’m just conducting a press conference for Jeannie while stopping Jack from climbing on the grand staircase.
MOM #1: Where’s Jeannie?
MOM #2: How’s Jeannie?
MOM #3: Why aren’t you Jeannie?
While fielding questions from the mom press on that particular day, I turned and saw the head of Marre’s school greeting Jack.
MS. ALVAR: How are you, Jack?
JACK: Great! Wanna see my penis?
Two pickups, two sides of town, two equal doses of awkward. I scurried my children out the mansion doors onto Fifth Avenue and into a cab.
A half hour later we arrive in front of our building on the Bowery. I give Marre and Jack each a quarter so they can get a gumball from the gumball machine outside of Patricia Field’s boutique (the gumball machine conveniently located between two mannequins in full S&M garb). As I wait for the kids, my friend the six-foot bearded drag queen André greets me.
“Hey, Jim.”
“Hey, André.”
There’s no place like home.
Your Special Day
When you have a child, a really fun thing to do is to throw them birthday parties. The first baby’s first birthday is an unforgettable event. Normally, during the first year of your first baby’s life, you and your wife will not go out and party like you used to. Ever. You are busy being consumed with figuring out the new-baby thing, and you really don’t feel comfortable leaving the baby with anyone else. You barely see your friends during that first baby’s first year, so by the time the first birthday rolls around, you are really ready for a party. The first baby’s first birthday party is not a party for your baby; it’s a party for you. Sure, the baby will someday appreciate that photo of them in front of the cake with the “1” candle and the photo of them taking their first bite of cake, but when a baby turns twelve months old, they really have no idea that they are even at a party, or that the party is actually for them, because their entire life seems like a party. A party for them. Everything is always new and exciting, they are always the center of attention, and, to them, most people look like clowns anyway. Except for the photos, it really doesn’t matter if a baby is even at their first birthday party. They wouldn’t even notice if you didn’t throw them a party at all. You are the one that needs the party. The baby obviously has no friends yet, so the guest list is all your friends you haven’t seen for a year. And since your friends are the guests, they will obviously need good food, good drinks, and music, and suddenly you have the recipe for a raging bash and you take the pictures of your baby in front of the cake, put them to bed, and carry on like, well, like you don’t have a baby.
Even after that first baby’s first birthday party, you still love throwing your kids birthday parties. You remember how exciting your own birthday parties were as a kid, even if it was just your mom taking you and a few friends to that disgusting McDonald’s indoor playground, it was still the time of your life. You want your kid to have that experience, too, so you throw them a fun birthday party. And guess what? All the evil, greedy businesses out there know you want to do it, and they see it as a wonderful way to take advantage of your desire to rekindle your childhood memories and throw your kids a fun birthday party by robbing you blind. You will soon find out that every chain restaurant, children’s museum, skate rink, bowling alley, toy store, and gymnastics club will offer “Birthday Party Packages” to save you the trouble of having all the kids over to your place for the small fee of a hundred billion dollars. A small price to pay for all the cheap, plastic, toxic made-in-China, unnecessary gifts that the other kids’ parents picked up on the way to the party that you are just going to end up regifting when your kid gets invited to one of their friends’ parties.
If your own kid’s birthday parties are fun, double that on how unfun other people’s kids’ birthday parties are. Because most two- to six-year-olds don’t drive or even know their own address, an adult will most likely also have to attend other kids’ parties with them. Given that my family has roughly the same population as South Dakota, I’ve already been to too many other kids’ birthday parties.
Other people’s children’s birthday parties are the most joyful events you will
ever resent having to attend. The reality of the sheer quantity of birthday parties you will be attending kicks in around kindergarten. It will seem like every kid in your children’s class has a birthday at least once a year. Can you believe that? Birthday parties trickle in and take over like an infestation of termites eating away at your Saturdays. They are in strange locations and at inconvenient times. My daughter Marre was invited to a birthday party that started at 9 a.m. on Saturday. Yes, 9 a.m. means morning, and Saturday means weekend. I actually thought it was a joke at first. I found myself asking Marre questions like “How good of a friend are you with this strange Audrey girl?” “Wouldn’t you rather watch cartoons on Saturday morning?” “How much would someone have to pay you to not go to this party?” I was ready to tell Marre that Saturday parties before noon were against our religion until Jeannie agreed to go.
Attending a birthday party for a little kid can be pretty awkward, especially if you weren’t invited. Sometimes you aren’t invited, just your child is. These parties are called “drop-offs,” where you leave your children in the care of some frazzled strangers at a Build-A-Bear Workshop, and you walk off with just enough time to do nothing except be that creepy guy wandering around a mall with a diet Coke being tailed by a suspicious security guard until you have to pick up your face-painted, sugar-highed puddle of a child.
