by Jim Gaffigan
Get Married, Have Kids, Get Fat
I’m getting fat … as I planned. Luckily, my gut is intentional. I’m actually preparing for a big role. Sure, it’s a cinnamon roll, but I want there to be room for it. Okay, fine, I could lose some weight, but I’m not going to hide behind some lame excuse. My paunch is no one’s fault but my kids’.
I’m gaining weight, and I do blame my kids. I suppose that’s the cliché, right? You get married, you have kids, and you get fat. It’s not like being around young children suddenly makes you hungry. It’s just being around what children eat. Have you seen what a six-year-old wants to eat? “I’ll have a slice of pizza, a chocolate milk, and a lollipop.” Like they are on some drug-induced munchie binge. “For dinner, get me mac and cheese, a handful of pretzels, and half of a cupcake.”
They don’t actually ask for half of a cupcake, but half a cupcake is all they’ll actually eat. Once my daughter Katie ate the icing off a cupcake and then asked for more cake on her bread. Half-eaten is an important detail. What are you supposed to do with the other half of that cupcake? A three-year-old will never finish their food. I’ll take my kids out to dinner, and they’ll leave half a plate of french fries. What? Who would actually leave french fries? It’s not some self-control thing. They aren’t thinking, “Moment on the lips, forever on the hips.” They just get distracted. “What’s that shiny thing over there?” Now I’m supposed to eat a boring-ass healthy salad when there’s a half a plate of fries twelve inches from me just going to waste? This is why being a parent is like the opposite of the Jenny Craig diet. I can just see the pitch: “I gained twenty pounds just eating small portions of my children’s leftovers. And it works!”
Now some of you might be thinking, why don’t I just order something healthy for my kids? Well, that’s not possible in a restaurant. Have you ever noticed that the children’s menu is exactly the same as the bar menu? Burger, hot dog, pizza. If you put the children’s menu at the bar, people wouldn’t even notice. “Oh, cool. I can color in an airplane while I drink this beer and wait for my chicken strips.”
Of course, there is a reason why there is no outrage that the children’s menu is the same as the bar menu. At a restaurant, the “I want my kids to eat healthy” rules are literally off the table. As a society, we are all concerned about childhood obesity until we bring a kid into a restaurant and want that kid to be quiet. Then even the most health-conscious mom changes her tune. “Yes, you can have cake and ice cream. Now what do you want for dessert?” Being at a restaurant with small children is not the time or place to enforce the “eat all your broccoli first” rule unless you want everyone in the restaurant to hate you. “Your children are so well behaved!” No they’re not—they’re sedated with deep-fried chicken strips.
Obviously, what a child eats at home is entirely the parent’s responsibility. Kids will eat other things besides fries and hot dogs. I should be clear that Jeannie only buys “organic” food, which I believe is a grocery term for “twice as expensive.” I’ve almost gotten used to eating a type of “sprouted” bread that I believe is made from tree bark. Thanks to Jeannie’s leadership, instead of eating junk food, our kids eat organic junk food. You make as many smart choices as you can, but the war of attrition eventually involves you relenting to the whining. “Fine, here’s an organic pizza roll.”
It’s always been hard for me to eat healthy, but with kids, it’s virtually impossible. To people without young kids, allow me to explain. A kid doesn’t have to be spoiled or exposed to bad habits; it can happen in an instant. You would never buy desserts to have around the house if you want your kids to eat healthy, but you might innocently have cake after dinner one night. A special treat, right? What you don’t realize is that to a five-year-old, you have now established a precedent. One piece of cake on one night has ushered in six weeks of “What’s for dessert?” You might say, “It’s Tuesday. There is no dessert.” Now, to a five-year-old, that only means try harder for dessert. “But a month and a half ago, we had cake after dinner. That’s how we do it now.” It doesn’t matter that it was their birthday. Now they expect it, and if they don’t get it, they give you this look like they are being deprived. So then you have the brilliant idea to start using it as a punishment: If you don’t do this, then no dessert! Which means now you have put yourself in a position where you are forced to actually have some dessert around in the event of the slim chance they actually do behave. So you must forsake your convictions and start buying desserts. This predicament is called “being stranded on a dessert island.”
Hand-in-Mouth Disease
Overall, kids are horrible at eating. We all know a baby’s first food experience is always a disaster. Anyone who has ever fed a baby his first cereal or strained carrots knows that calling this experience “eating” is generous. It is really a ritual that simply entails smearing a baby with food. The chance that some may actually end up in his mouth is purely incidental.
The next step in the evolution of eating is when a baby is learning to pick up food and “feed” himself. Watching a nine-month-old try to find his mouth is a game of pin the tail on the donkey. The food ends up in his ears, eyes, nose, and hair, but, again, rarely the mouth.
You would think a couple of years of practice would be enough for these babies to figure how to eat. After all, you can get an MBA degree in the same amount of time. Unfortunately, eating with children aged two to six years old is not that much of an improvement. First off, getting them to sit in a chair at the table is an accomplishment. Once they are there, getting them to properly use utensils is a feat. I don’t have to explain how fast kids can turn a simple butter knife into a shiv. A full spoon will be empty by the time it reaches the mouth. Little kids may start off with a fork, but eventually they’ll return to their trusty hands, because inevitably that fork is on the floor within five seconds of the kid picking it up. Eating with their hands seems to be the preferred method by a long shot.
Most of the time, I feel like I’m eating with a tribe of Bedouins … except for the fact that Bedouins actually eat over their plates. Kids don’t bother to eat over their plates. It normally appears as if they are attempting to NOT eat over their plates. This is why there is no difference between a four-year-old eating a taco and throwing a taco on the floor. The amount of food on the floor under the table where a kid is eating could be the solution to world hunger. And if there is ever a fork shortage, they could solve that crisis under that same table. The beverages, however, are normally knocked over on the table, where they can wreak the most havoc.
A little kid spilling a drink at the dinner table is as reliable as the female lead falling down in a romantic comedy. It’s inevitable. The moment you forget about it or think it won’t happen, it happens. To be fair, one time our two-year-old went for an entire dinner without spilling her drink. She spilled mine instead. Most of the time, you watch the spill happen, and you are powerless to stop it. Time always seems to move in slow motion as you sit paralyzed, watching the tiny hand or elbow clumsily knocking into the side of a cup. It feels like hours after you’ve cried “Noooo!” before the glass actually tips over, soaking everything in sight. The only surprising aspect of the spilled drink is the consistency of the little kid’s reaction to it: There is no reaction. They do nothing. They don’t attempt to clean it up with a napkin or curb the extent of the damage by picking up the cup. Nothing. They just watch the spill, fascinated as it splits into steams, channels, and tributaries, as if they are hoping for a salmon to jump out. As a parent, you react in the exact opposite way. You overreact. As if your yelp is somehow going to help stop this inevitable event. It’s your Groundhog Day moment. The spill happens every day, but unlike Bill Murray, you somehow don’t get more adept at dealing with the consequences. This is of course why God invented sippy cups.
For parents, sippy cups are to the beverage what pizza is to the food. If there was a flag for parents of small children, it would have a sippy cup and a slice of pizza on
it. By the way, the sippy cup would have nonmatching parts, and the pizza would be only partially eaten if anyone wants to be the Betsy Ross of the kiddie food flag.
It’s easy to understand why pizza is the official food of early childhood. Kids love pizza. Pizza makes kids way happier than the Happy Meal, and it doesn’t even have to come with a toy. If you meet a kid who doesn’t like pizza in some form, I recommend counseling. Pizza is fun. Pizza is a synonym for party. Here are my instructions on how to throw a really great pizza party. Step one: Order pizza. That’s it.
Pizza is the answer to kids’ eating problems I mentioned earlier. Pizza is so easy. Kids don’t need utensils to eat a pizza. Hell, you don’t even need a plate. The crust is the built-in edible plate. Pizza makes you a hero in the eyes of your kids. “Daddy got pizza!” You are higher status walking in the door with a pizza than if you were returning from a war with a Purple Heart. Pizza is easy to order and easy to clean up, but here’s the rub: pizza is horrible for you. As an adult, even the unhealthiest of us understand that we should eat pizza roughly once a year or we’ll look like someone who, well, looks like they eat pizza all the time.
Unfortunately, if you have young kids you will eat pizza all the time. Well, it will feel like all the time. If kids are celebrating anything, there will be pizza. For the last couple of years, Friday night has been “pizza night” in our home, and I’ve grown to dread it. I never get a chance to crave or even want pizza anymore.
It’s sad for me to see the shift in my attitude toward pizza. I’ve loved it all my life. It was a treat in my childhood, a staple in college, and a terrific late-night snack after shows, but now that’s all gone. Pizza has become that old buddy who was really fun to hang out with, but now he shows up at your house all the time uninvited, trying to make you fat, and you are like, “Dude, I know we used to party together, but you really need to get a life.” Like sleep and silence, my love for pizza has become another casualty of parenting.
We Need Bread
I like taking my kids to eat at places like diners, IHOP, and Waffle House. They eat like five dollars’ worth of food and do like forty dollars’ worth of damage to the restaurant. I don’t even feel guilty. You won’t exactly find these places in a Michelin Guide.
Every six months or so, I make the disastrous error of taking my five children out to dinner at a nice restaurant. Now, “nice restaurant” can have many meanings, so let’s just say a restaurant that has cloth napkins that no normal human would bring five little kids into. I don’t know how or why I could ever forget what a mistake it is taking an eight-year-old, a six-year-old, a three-year-old, a one-year-old, and a newborn into a nice restaurant, but I always do. As we are walking to our table, it is clear that everyone eating in the restaurant knows that it’s a gigantic mistake. The waiter always knows. The entire restaurant staff has the same look on their face, like, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
What little kids bring to the table is the direct opposite of everything people enjoy about having dinner in a nice restaurant; sitting, waiting patiently, enjoying the ambience, not being around obnoxiousness. Sure, sometimes a three-year-old will sit quietly and not lick the top of a salt shaker, but an experienced parent knows they are just ticking time bombs. Three-year-olds only sit down for two reasons. And let’s just say the other one is eating. Just eating. Not having a conversation and then eating. Not hearing about the specials and then eating. Not enjoying the atmosphere and then eating. Just eating, and soon after that, the other reason that three-year-olds sit down.
It is for this reason that any parent of young children knows you must feed them immediately, if not sooner, in a restaurant. If there is not bread on the table a minicrisis ensues. I truly feel for any waiter or waitress that gets our table.
WAITER: Hi, I’m Todd. Would you guys like to hear about our spec—
ME: Can we please have bread? We need bread, or these kids will tear this place apart. If you don’t have bread, just bring out a chew toy or a bone to occupy them. Trust me. I’m looking out for everyone in this restaurant.
A conscientious waiter will respond as if I’ve told him we have to evacuate and he won’t have time to gather his possessions. The kids will get bread, their drink, and their food, and then Jeannie, myself, and all of the other diners will enjoy their food in peace. Instead of this, we normally get the waiter who seems to have never had any interaction with young children. We are always educating them: “Please bring the kids’ meals as soon as they are ready.” A lot of waiters at fancy restaurants are really way too occupied with the proper order of service: drinks, appetizers, soup, salad, entrée, dessert, coffee. Their training and the rules supersede our knowledge of what will happen if the kids have to wait for food. When we are with our kids, we don’t care the slightest bit about the etiquette of fine dining. Just bring the kids their food first. Despite our clear request, on many occasions Jeannie and I have actually gotten our meals first. In what universe would we be able to eat our dinners when our kids have nothing in front of them except glass and steel weapons?
Half the battle is to keep the kids seated at the table and for me to not drive a steak knife in my throat for being so dumb as to bring a three-year-old to a nice restaurant. By design, nicer restaurants don’t have crayons to occupy the children. Often we have to improvise. “Here, play with my phone.” “Here’s some gum.” “Enjoy this pack of matches.” It’s amazing how many ways you can fold a cocktail napkin to creatively transform it into something unique like a smaller folded cocktail napkin.
Really nice restaurants don’t have a children’s menu option. In this case, I always suggest ordering plain pasta with olive oil. Anything else you order will be an enormous waste of money and time. The fancier the entrée, the less likely your kid will want to eat it.
Every Thanksgiving I do shows in Las Vegas at The Mirage, and the whole gang comes. Last year we went to a fine-dining restaurant for the Thanksgiving meal. When we heard that they had a special of soup that was festively served in miniature pumpkins, we ignorantly thought the kids would be delighted. Below is my then seven-year-old daughter’s critique of the amazing fifteen-dollar pumpkin soup she didn’t even try.
Aside from the plain pasta, I have another brilliant piece of wisdom for those of you who want to enjoy yourselves while eating at a fine restaurant with your small children: Don’t bring them. You’re welcome.
You Win, McDonald’s
It’s just too easy. I’m sorry. I know McDonald’s is horrible for you, and taking my children to McDonald’s is irresponsible. I even understand the evil behind the “Happy Meal.” A free toy with a meal? It’s evil genius. Just like a divorced parent, McDonald’s knows if you want a child to come back, you have to bribe them. I know McDonald’s is essentially buying another generation of consumers. Even crack dealers find McDonald’s unscrupulous. But McDonald’s is too easy. They could provide small packs of cigarettes in every Happy Meal and I still would go to McDonald’s on long car rides with my children.
ME: Okay, honey, you can have the apple dippers with the jug of caramel dipping sauce, but not the cigarettes.
FIVE-YEAR-OLD: Just one?
ME: All right, just one. But don’t smoke when you’re pregnant.
Anyone who has had to travel over an hour with a little kid in a car has been to McDonald’s. All experienced parents eventually reach the same conclusion. “Why should I stop at McDonald’s and get my kid crappy chicken nuggets when I could wait until we get to the hotel and get my kids crappy chicken strips for twenty dollars?” McDonald’s wins. You don’t have to get out of your car. You are taking your kids out to dinner, but you don’t have to take them out to dinner. You don’t have to clean any dishes. The box that the Happy Meal comes in transforms magically into a mini garbage can. You even already know how disappointed you are going to feel about going there. You win, McDonald’s.
It’s not just traveling. McDonald’s is an amazing bargaining chip with your childr
en. “If you keep behaving like that, I’m not taking you to McDonald’s.” I mentioned earlier that my father would force me and my siblings to do yard work every Saturday for hours when I was growing up. What I failed to mention is that my father would reward us by taking us to McDonald’s at the end of the day. It seemed like a great deal when I was eight. Of course, the irony is that my dad had to feed us anyway. “[Cough.] How about you do eight hours of yard work and in exchange I’ll feed you dinner?” Deal. Of course, we would have been fed dinner, but this was McDonald’s.
Really, the best and worst part about taking your kids to McDonald’s is that you find yourself at McDonald’s. The strongest willpower melts away. You have an excuse, a justification, for eating McDonald’s. “Well, I’m here anyway. Guess I have to get the Quarter Pounder with Cheese.” I’ve even mastered justifying a stop at a McDonald’s drive-thru when all my kids are asleep. “Hey! We finally found a McDonald’s! Oh, the kids are asleep. Well, I’m here anyway. Guess I have to get the Quarter Pounder with Cheese.” You win, McDonald’s.
How Sweet It Is
I’m assuming everyone reading this was a kid at one time. Well, most of you were. I don’t have to tell you how important candy is to children. Candy is the currency of children. Kids collect it, trade it, and hoard it. It’s how parents bribe their kids. It’s how annoying kids get friends. I’m sure I wasn’t the only kid thinking, “I don’t really like that neighbor boy, but he always has candy, so it looks like we are going to hang out a lot.” As a kid, it was baffling to contemplate the adult blasé attitude toward candy. I remember thinking, “When I’m an adult and have a job, I’m going to spend all my money on candy.” Of course, as you get older, your taste buds change, you start getting acne, and eventually you decide you don’t want to be a fat tub of turds. You realize that you have to set boundaries with candy. By that I mean you decide to never buy candy or willfully be around it.
