Dad Is Fat

by Jim Gaffigan

My son’s preschool had an annual fundraiser that involved selling a case of chocolate bars. Really? Chocolate bars? Part of why we are sending our kids to preschool is so they wouldn’t be at home begging for candy. This always felt comparable to raising money to fight heart disease by selling steaks.

My love of lollipops is not about eating them; it’s about how quiet they make my children. It is virtually impossible for a three-year-old to whine and complain with a lollipop in her mouth.

If you ever take your kids to a situation where they must be quiet, bring lollipops. They’re like flavored muzzles.

You are always forced to face the dilemma “Do I eat the sugar that will make me fat, or do I use this other stuff that will kill me? Hmmm. Eh, what’s a little cancer? Cancer makes you lose weight, right?”

having four kids is not strange at all. In New York City, it is equivalent to having a thousand. I felt like friends started treating us like we were Amish and voluntarily living without electricity.

I explained what it was like having a fourth kid very simply: imagine you are drowning … and then someone hands you a baby.

Judging other people says more about you than about the person you’re judging. Except of course when you’re judging people with too many cats. And by that, I mean more than one cat. Those people are completely bonkers and should be locked up.

When you have five kids, you are invited to far fewer social events. I know this may seem like a negative to some, but let’s be serious, it’s a positive. People don’t invite you to stay at their houses anymore. Thank God. People are far more forgiving of social failures.

going to Disney as an adult is like standing in line at the DMV. The only real difference is that at the DMV at least you leave with a driver’s license.

The Black Hills of South Dakota are breathtaking. They are sacred to the Lakota Indians, and out of respect, our government had someone carve four white guys’ faces into one of their mountains.

You can usually tell a hotel has an indoor pool because the lobby will smell like a bucket of bleach. I’m always tempted to ask someone at the front desk, “Do you have an indoor pool, or did someone just clean up a murder scene? ’Cause my eyes are bleeding.”

Last summer, we had four children, and I noticed there were only three Eskimo pies left in the freezer for dessert. The first thought that came to me was, “Well, looks like I’m eating three Eskimo pies.”