Dad Is Fat

by Jim Gaffigan

I don’t know what’s going on with the cover and title. Dad Is Fat? I mean, obviously he’s fat.

I am your dad. The father of all five of you pale creatures. Given how attractive and fertile your mother is, there may be more of you by the time you read this book. If you are reading this, I am probably dead. I would assume this because I can honestly foresee no other situation where you’d be interested in anything I’ve done.

I suppose the first really big red flag of the trip was the fact that there was one CD allowed to be played in the car. It was explained to us that this CD was meant to soothe the baby. The volume would be occasionally adjusted based on the baby’s needs. Um, okay.

The following are characteristics of a cult from the American Family Foundation. I’ve provided some clarity with the [brackets]. • The group members [parents] display an excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment to an individual [their child]. • The group members [parents] are preoccupied with bringing in new members. • The group members [parents] are preoccupied with making money. • The leadership [child] induces guilt feelings in members [parents] in order to control them. • Members’ [parents’] subservience to the group [children] causes them to cut ties with family and friends, and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group. • Members [parents] are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group [children]. • Members [parents] are encouraged or required to live [in the suburbs] and/or socialize [playdates] only with other group members [parents].

I am considered a clean comedian. This basically means I rarely curse and don’t work blue. I never made an intentional decision to be clean; it just ended up that way. When you are discussing mini-muffins in a stand-up act, it’s not really necessary to curse or bring sex into the material. Occasionally a reviewer will describe me as “family-friendly,” which always makes me cringe.

“I gotta go to the post office, but I’d probably have to put on pants. And they’re only open till five. Looks like I’m going to have to do that next week.”

The guy who invented the phrase “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” probably had a baby. And, for a moment, probably contemplated throwing the baby out.

I used to have a lot of faith in humanity before the advent of the website “comment” section.

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.

When you think about it, God’s requests in the Old Testament took a dramatic leap in difficulty. “Don’t eat that apple!” “Build a boat!” Then, out of nowhere, “Cut off part of your penis!”

I used to wonder why I had hair on my legs, but now I know it’s for my toddler sons and daughters to pull themselves up off the ground with as I scream in pain.

Marre, now eight, has begun to wonder how Santa can reach every house in the world by flying reindeer. I suppose soon Marre will start lying to Jeannie and me about believing in Santa a couple of years after she stops. That’s what I did. I didn’t want to ruin it for my parents, and also I didn’t want to risk dissuading them from getting me presents.

don’t feel guilty when I deny eating my kids’ after-school snacks. I feel guilty telling them that their mom did.

Five Little Monkeys: I’d think that after the second little monkey jumped off the bed and bumped its head, the doctor who the mama called would have been tempted to call Children’s Services. Yet the doctor’s advice remained, “No more monkeys jumping on the bed.” Really? Didn’t that doctor take an oath at some point? I smell a lucrative malpractice suit.

There should be a children’s song “If you’re happy and you know it, keep it to yourself and let your dad watch the football game.”

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.

I don’t want to get all political, but I am definitely pro–gum control.

The sugar predicament is strange. It’s always like, “Sugar’s bad! Sugar will rot your teeth and make you fat! Use these yellow packets instead.” Then, like six months later: “Don’t use those yellow packets—they cause cancer! They even cause worse cancer than those pink packets of fake sugar we told you caused cancer six months ago.” 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?”

“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.

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.”

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.

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.” In spite of my lack of parental instincts, in the end I did the right thing. I only ate one. That way the four of them could split the last two evenly. How else are they going to learn math? Just trying to do my part.

I’ll miss lying to them and actually getting away with it. I’ll miss being smarter than they are. I’ll miss the confiscated candy bowl in the cupboard. I’ll miss the access to kid food. Did you know you can’t go into Chuck E. Cheese’s without a kid? Where else except everywhere am I going to get horrible pizza?

Of course, I don’t think I’m God, but I am a little godlike to my children. This is what I’m going to miss the most. Even though they don’t view me as the tyrant I’d hope to be, to them I’m all-powerful: I’m their creator and provider. They love me and kind of fear me. They want to be in my arms when they are scared. They want my forgiveness after they’ve done something wrong—“Daddy, are you happy at me?” They want to be with me. I know this won’t last. The expectations have been set too high. It’s only a matter of time before they are totally disappointed when I fall off that lofty pedestal and they realize I’m just a giant kid myself.