by Jim Gaffigan
I did figure out what makes Disney so “magical.” It’s because you can walk around sweating your ass off for twelve hours and still gain weight. “I know it’s a hundred degrees out here, but these fries taste great.” We eat because we want to have a good time. “This churro is cheering us up, right?” In the end, that’s what most vacations are. Just you eating in a place you’ve never been. “Why don’t we eat something, then we’ll go get something to eat? Then we should see that thing we’re supposed to see; they probably have a snack bar, so we can get something to eat. But after that, we definitely gotta go out and get something to eat.”
We eat constantly because there is pressure to have a good time on vacation. If we are lucky, we get seven days and two of those days are spent in airport security lines. So the rest of the vacation we are under this cloud of “Hurry up and have fun before we have to pack.”
If there is pressure to have fun on a vacation, at Disney it’s desperation. You see it on the strained faces of parents. They all seem to have this “This was an enormous mistake” expression. I remember telling my kids, “I hope you are enjoying yourselves. It was either this or send you to college. Now hurry up and have fun, because we’re never coming back here.”
You try to hurry up and have fun, but there’s always one thing slowing you down. The lines for the rides at Disney. I stood in line for an hour and twenty minutes in hundred-degree heat for the Dumbo ride. After a minute I realized “I’m the Dumbo. I’m actually waiting in line to see myself.” I almost expected there to be a huge mirror at the end of the line with some guy just pointing at me: “DUMBO!”
Some of those Disney rides make you realize how far we’ve come with amusement park rides. I was on the “It’s a Small World” ride, and all I could think was, “There was a time when people found this entertaining?” You could be on acid and think, “I’m not getting anything here. I think I’ll go back to staring at my hand. Yes, this is much better. If only I had two of these.”
To be fair, some of the Disney rides are from the 1970s, when there was no competition. It doesn’t seem like that much thought went into them. “Okay, um, how about a bumper car goes into a dark room and there’s a picture of Winnie-the-Pooh? People would stand in line for an hour for that, right? Well, what if we hollow out a log and throw them over a waterfall?” They must have figured, “We have their money, what are they gonna do?” I must admit my favorite ride was the air-conditioned bus back to the airport. Well worth the wait.
For parents, Disney is kind of a cruel joke. A year later, you ask a five-year-old their favorite part of Disney, and they’ll say, “We went to Disney? I don’t remember. Can we go again?” Sorry, they went out of business.
Disney is a perfect example of one of those things you do just for your children. There is no possible benefit an adult can take away from the Disney experience except feeling like a superdad in your children’s eyes. Now there are adults without children who go to Disney, and they are called weirdos. Very nice people. Absolutely crazy. Even the nerdiest of nerds at Comic-Con think those people are nut jobs. “Hey, I may be wearing a Batman suit, but you’re waiting in line for an autograph from Aladdin? Get some perspective, dude!” I know that sounds mean, but when you are trying to entertain your kids while you wait for two hours in the boiling heat because there are four fifty-year-olds in line in front of you for Peter Pan, you’d be a little irritated, too.
Picture This
Recently I ordered school photos of my six-year-old. Now I will only have roughly three hundred thousand photos of him for this year. I have more photos of my children than times my father ever looked at me. It’s almost as if I’m gathering evidence for a future trial of whether or not I was a good father. “Your Honor, as proof of the defendant’s innocence, I’d like to submit 1.5 million photos that my client took of the plaintiff.” As parents, we can’t stop taking pictures of our kids. “Hey, take a picture of that. We’ll never look at it.” We take pictures of everyday life and act like we are capturing history. “Unbelievable! The cat is asleep.” Click. I’ve calculated that if I showed you all the pictures I have of just my six-year-old, it would take roughly six years. It kind of defeats the point, right?
I suppose this happens because we have cameras on our phones. Do we need that? It’s not like ten years ago we were thinking, “I wish I could take a low-quality photo of my dessert and text it to someone who’s not interested.”
Remember when photos were special? It was not that long ago. “It’s school picture day! We better get Junior a haircut. We want him to look nice. Don’t want to waste the time of that camera expert and that precious film.” If you were one of the younger kids in your family, pictures were even more rare. As the youngest of six, the neighbors probably had more photos of me than my own parents did. If someone came up to me today and showed me a picture of myself when I was ten, it would be unbelievably exciting news. “You have a picture of me when I was ten? Did an archaeologist dig it out of the rubble?”
I won “Largest Head” that year.
Now we show our phone photos, apologizing, “I don’t have any recent photos of my kid. This is from like a month ago. He looks totally different now.” Because of cell phone cameras we have way more photos than we will ever need. What are we supposed to do with all these photos of our kids? Yes, there is the benefit of our computers running really slow, clogged with thousands of photos of the same pose, but outside of that, it’s pointless. Yet we keep taking pictures. Click, click, click. We download all of them. We don’t even weed out the bad ones. “Eh, I’ll just get another computer. This will be my Disney trip computer.” My parents had boxes of photos in their closets. Now we have old computers in our closets. “Hey, honey, there’s our wedding computer.” “There’s my computer from when I was single. I guess I should destroy that one.”
Snow Job
Last winter Jeannie and I took our then seven-year-old, five-year-old, two-year-old, and six-month-old skiing on the other side of the country. That seems like a good idea, right? Well, it did to this genius. I even had four months to not realize it was a ridiculous idea. No, I wasn’t in a coma during that period. I spent that time busy, unaware, and planning the trip.
Our story starts in October. I had just booked some theater shows in Salt Lake City during January’s Martin Luther King holiday weekend. Suddenly I had a brilliant thought: I’ll bring the whole family and take my kids skiing in Park City. Perfect. It will be fun for everyone. The snow. The hot chocolate! I’ll get my city kids out on the slopes. They’ll love it. Sure, it might seem a little strange to have such a large family in the heart of Mormon country, but let’s do it. What better way to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. than going skiing around a bunch of rich white people?
My life feels like skiing uphill.
I actually thought I was being smart. I’m not really a skier, but I wanted to expose my young children to skiing. Friends had always talked about the joy of taking their kids skiing. Let’s do this! Since I’m no ski expert, I’ll make this as easy as possible. I decided we would stay at a nice ski resort. It will be expensive, but it will be worth it. Of course, I’ll have to fly all the kids across the country to Salt Lake City, which is also pretty costly, but this will be the family vacation. I guess a six-month-old can’t ski so we’ll have to bring a babysitter. Okay, so that’s another expense. Obviously I’m not going to buy skis or ski pants—we’ll rent them. That will add an expense, but this is not just the family vacation, this will be the THE family vacation. If only cost turned out to be my only problem.
Unfortunately, I only realized this was a really bad idea when we were on the plane flying to Salt Lake. Whenever I travel with my young children, I’m always reminded of an important travel lesson: Never travel with my young children. The flight from New York to Salt Lake City is five hours, but with four young kids, it only feels like fifty. It wasn’t just torture for me. Let’s just say traveling across the country with a seven-year-ol
d, five-year-old, two-year-old, and six-month-old is not really how you make friends on a plane. Pretending you don’t know your kids is not funny to the businessman trying to sleep in the window seat. Apple has yet to develop a device that can engage a two-year-old. After four hours of convincing her that she could only hear the movie on the iPad with the headphones on, I became painfully aware that I’d made an enormous mistake. As the plane landed in Salt Lake, I remembered that the friends who took their kids skiing were incredibly rich. Oh, and their kids were teenagers, and their kids are only one kid, and they own a ski condo in Vermont, and I’m an idiot.
As we gathered our bags in Salt Lake, I resigned myself to the realities. I’m a fool, I can’t afford this trip, and this is going to be really hard with a baby. Anyway, we were there, and I was determined to make it work. Let’s enjoy it. Just a few more steps before we get to the hotel and I can start preparing for my show that night.
After the hour drive from the airport to the resort, we were advised by the lady behind the desk to go into town to pick up our skis and avoid dealing with the chaos the next morning. (I learned later there was a courtesy service included by the hotel that came to your room and fitted everyone for skis, but somehow the person checking us in had never heard of this service. They only worked at the hotel that provided the service.) After the unnecessary journey into the heart of town, renting the skis became a journey in itself. Let me be honest, most people in the world are more patient than me, and none of these people are my children. Getting your kids fitted for skis and then not taking them skiing is not fun for anybody. In defense of my children’s bad behavior following a long day of traveling, we were also taking them shopping and not buying them anything.
The next day was the first day of skiing. Getting little kids dressed for skiing is not easy and may take a while, but at least by the time you finish zipping them all up, they have to go to the bathroom. For the life of me I can’t figure out how I ever thought it was a good idea to take a two-year-old that has just mastered walking to a ski lesson. Eventually we got everyone to his or her ski classes, and Jeannie and I skied for ten minutes before we had to pick them up.
Katie after her $150, twenty-minute ski lesson.
After an overpriced lunch, we dropped our two-year-old off for a nap, and we went skiing as a family. Kind of. I suppose there are many approaches to skiing. Jeannie and our seven-year-old, Marre, took a more cautious, leisurely approach to the mountain. Jeannie made it clear that because she had a six-month-old and a two-year-old back at the hotel, she was not interested in doing any daredevil stuff. The approach of our five-year-old, Jack, can only be described as “straight down until you crash.” There are people on Jackass who would find this approach reckless. I can’t believe that I thought this would be relaxing at all. Even riding a chairlift with little kids who love to scare the hell out of their parents is incredibly stressful.
For some reason, ski mountains are marked with some sort of Lucky Charm marshmallow identification system. There were blue diamonds, green moons. Oh, I don’t remember exactly. I just remember sticking to the green and avoiding the dreaded black diamonds. Near the end of the second and final day of skiing, everyone got more adventurous, and we were ready to move onto the blue. Well, the kids and I were. Jeannie was hesitant. She didn’t want the slightest injury to interfere with the daunting task of flying back to the East Coast with the babies. At the end of the day, with some coaxing, I got Jeannie to go down one of the more difficult blue hills with the big kids and me. After reassuring her it was totally doable and fun, we dared the chairlift up.
Getting off the chairlift, our five-year-old instantaneously transformed himself into a bullet, went barreling down the hill, and immediately wiped out. I skied down and helped him up. I then helped my seven-year-old up. Then helped my five-year-old up again. Then helped my seven-year-old up again. Then they both helped me up. After a long string of killer wipeouts, eventually we made it down the hill. At the bottom, we waited for Jeannie. Then we waited some more. My children asked, “Where’s Momma?” I giggled, thinking how mad Jeannie would be at me for having her do the more difficult hill. After way too long of staring up at the hill and waiting for Jeannie, they began to close the ski lifts, signaling the end of the day. Starting to panic, I asked ski patrol for assistance. I was assured they wouldn’t leave anyone on the mountain. Wouldn’t leave anyone on the mountain? What? The kids became more concerned, and I tried to be cool. Then another half hour passed as I watched the ski patrol making plans for what they would do that night. Okay. Now I was frightened. I began to consider the reality that my wife had skied off a cliff and died, leaving me with four young children all because I dragged her across the country to go skiing. I had also convinced her to ski a hill she didn’t want to take. I was not only the worst father in the world, I think I could be prosecuted for murder.
After about an hour of bargaining with God, the ski patrol central got a radio call that a woman on the slopes had been hit from behind by a snowboarder. It was Jeannie! She had accidentally ended up on one of the dreaded black diamond hills. Apparently her “optional” helmet saved her life. She had been recovering in some sort of ski patrol station and was skiing back down, shaken up but not injured. I began to breathe again and put on my stoic daddy face as I dried my kids’ tears and told them Mommy was okay. Luckily, Jeannie was too relieved to be mad at me.
When we finally arrived back in New York City and settled into our cramped apartment, I did a head count. We were all alive. A little poorer, but alive. All in all, the ski trip was worth it. We can go a year without groceries, but I can’t go a day without a wife.
On the Road Again
During summer and spring vacations, I take my kids camping. Well, actually I take my kids on a giant tour bus so Jeannie and I can work and the kids can pretend they are camping.
I wish I liked camping. Then again, I also wish I liked running marathons and eating vegetables. I know my children would love to camp, and I’m also sure my children would love a dog, but given the size of our apartment and the fact that Jeannie is supposedly allergic, that’s not going to happen either. I think she’s just allergic to the fact she would be the only one taking care of the dog.
I guess you could say I’m allergic to camping. Jeannie loves camping because she says camping was a tradition in her family. I always point out that prior to the invention of the house, camping was a tradition in everyone’s family. I don’t get camping. “Hey, want to burn a couple of vacation days sleeping on the ground outside? Chances are you’ll wake up freezing and covered in a rash?” No, thanks. If camping is so great, why are the bugs always trying to get in your house? My parents never took me camping, and I think it was because they loved me. Has anyone ever been a happy camper? Whenever we use that term “happy camper,” we’re being sarcastic. “He is NOT a happy camper.” Why don’t we just call the person a camper? He’s miserable. You know who’s a happy camper? The guy leaving the campsite. He gets to take a shower. I’ve tried to explain to my children that we do a different type of camping that includes a tour bus, hotels, and best of all, no camping.
So why a tour bus? Although I complain about my children, I really do hate being away from them. I learned quickly that being gone for a weekend doing shows can easily turn into being gone for a week doing shows. Our initial solution was to bring our children for long weekends whenever we could. As our clan grew, this quickly became cost-prohibitive. Our solution was a tour bus.
Yes, a tour bus. People often think we mean a Winnebago or a large van but we’re talking about an actual tour bus like rock stars use, but there’s no stripper pole. This may seem like overkill, but it makes perfect sense. The bus is roughly the same size as our apartment but it gets better. The tour bus means no airports. No security lines. No taking little kids through security lines at airports. Our bus picks us up at our apartment building, we load everyone and all the stuff on, and we are off doing shows. The bus is expensiv
e to rent, so we do a show a night as we dart across North America for usually two weeks. Some kids go to Florida or a have a summerhouse. Our children will have “bus camping” memories.
There are six bunks and a large bed on the tour bus. Perfect for me, Jeannie, our five children, and a babysitter who always seems to quit whenever we get back from our camping bus tour. We also bring a portable crib or “travel cage.” We drive mostly at night because children don’t really understand the concept of “no walking” while the bus is moving.
On a typical day, we wake up on the bus in a new city and head into a hotel to check in. We don’t really need the hotel because we have the bus, but we need the hotel pool and the breakfast. They are usually nonfancy hotels that provide a “complimentary” breakfast. I should point out that this “complimentary” breakfast is neither complimentary of the hotel or of the meal of breakfast. We are always grateful to have it, but it often feels like a breakfast garage sale.
Happy Camper
HOTEL MANAGER: Okay, corporate headquarters says we have to offer a free breakfast, but they won’t give us any money.
EMPLOYEE #1: Well, we could make some biscuits and gravy from papier-mâché?
EMPLOYEE #2: I heard a middle school went out of business—maybe we could get their juice machine. It’s from the 1950s, but who cares?
HOTEL MANAGER: Great ideas. All right, moving on. How much can we overcharge for Internet access?
We loved the ducks at the Peabody Hotel. They were delicious!
