Dad Is Fat (24 page)

So, no kids, one kid, five kids, or sixteen kids, I say we just live and let live. This is the land of the free and the home of the brave enough to have five kids. 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. A good friend of ours has three cats in her studio apartment and asked me, “Can you tell that I have cats?” I replied, “No, but I can tell you have a box of turds in your living room.” She recently told me that she had just gotten a new kitten. Obviously I asked her, “Are you done yet?”

Big families are not new to me; I was one of six children. We were “Six kids, Catholic.” I remember saying that as a teenager to people when they asked how many children were in my family. There would always be a beat after I said “Six kids,” for the person to silently speculate about the size of our family; then I would give the explanation, “Catholic.” Strange how that seemed to be a satisfactory answer: “Six kids, Catholic.” I sometimes wondered if I didn’t follow the “Six kids” with “Catholic,” someone might have said, “Six kids? Wow, your mom must be a whore.”

Truth be told, my parents were Catholic but it wasn’t like the pope told my mom and dad how many children to have. They just liked kids. Well, my mom did, anyway. I suppose the Catholic explanation for the large family was my quick justification for the size of our family. Similar to how heavy drinkers seem to blame their drinking on their ethnic heritage. “I’m not an alcoholic, I’m Irish American.”

Growing up, this is how my family dressed all the time
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I loved growing up in a big family, but everyone from a big family always says they loved growing up in a big family. It seems a little suspicious. Like when people brag about growing up in the Bronx. Nobody questions their sincerity, but have you ever been to the Bronx?

Honestly, I have nothing to compare the big family experience to. I was the youngest of six children. The scrape of the pot. My parents tried their best, but they were exhausted. It was like the last half hour of a brunch buffet. It’s still a great meal, but let’s just say at that point, the guy working at the omelet station has lost some of his enthusiasm. Parents burn out in big families. You can even see it in the naming of children. The first kid: “You were named after your grandfather.” The sixth kid: “You were named after a sandwich I ate. I loved that sandwich. Now go get your brother, Reuben.” My parents had had five teenagers lie to them before I even asked to borrow the car. By the time they got to me, they were beyond suspicious. They were illogical. “Can I go roller skating?” “No! We won’t have you ending up pregnant like your sister.”

Nobody told me it was black tie
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Given that I come from “Six kids, Catholic,” I shouldn’t be surprised when people assume my large family is for religious reasons. I’m Catholic. Everyone knows Mormons, Catholics, and Orthodox Jews have large families. So it is for religious reasons, right? I’ve found that’s not how it works. If anything, you have four or five kids and THEN you become religious. Believe me, once you lose a kid in a New York City park, atheist or not, you start talking to God right away. “Hey, God, I know I haven’t talked to you in a while … probably since that last pregnancy test. I guess it’s kind of ironic, me reaching out,
having lost that same kid. Anyway, if you can help me find my son, I promise I will never do anything bad again. I won’t even eat at Wendy’s— oh, wait. There he is. Never mind, God. Well, we’re off to Wendy’s. Talk to you when I get cancer.” Kids and disease are the true gateways to faith.

Then why so many? Friends often ask this question. Heck, I often wonder myself. While I can’t think of my life without any one of my children, why so many of them? I like to think people would understand when they see I’m married to a woman as beautiful and amazing as Jeannie. Then again, if the number of our children were based on how I felt about Jeannie, we would probably give the Duggars a run for their money.

Well, why not? I guess the reasons against having more children always seem uninspiring and superficial. What exactly am I missing out on? Money? A few more hours of sleep? A more peaceful meal? More hair? These are nothing compared to what I get from these five monsters who rule my life. I believe each of my five children has made me a better man. So I figure I only need another thirty-four kids to be a pretty decent guy. Each one of them has been a pump of light into my shriveled black heart. I would trade money, sleep, or hair for a smile from one of my children in a heartbeat. Well, it depends on how much hair.

There are hidden benefits of having five kids. Besides the unconditional love, the most obvious is the free pass. 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. “We never received a thank-you note from the Gaffigans.” “Honey, they have five kids. We are lucky they even showed up. Let’s not invite them next time.” Having five kids is like having a perpetual doctor’s excuse.

You actually are forced to clean up and simplify your life by what is called the TMK factor: Too Many Kids. Their wedding is in Alaska? How do we get out of that? TMK. Everyone has to volunteer for the school safety patrol? Not us. TMK. People go to the gym and work out? Not me. TMK.

I sometimes wonder what explanation my children will provide for our large family. “Five kids, Catholic” would be too easy. “Five kids, Dad Crazy” would be too on the nose. “Five kids, my parents had a healthy sex life” would be too much information. I can’t believe you even brought that one up! I guess I don’t care how they explain it as long as they don’t say, “Thirty-four kids, Catholic.”

As a parent, you always secretly hope other people will find your baby as adorable and as special as you do. When our first child, Marre, was a baby I did a couple of shows in China, and Jeannie and the baby came along. Let me be clear that I have a great respect for the Chinese, and I don’t just say that because we are all going to be working for them in a couple of years. During our visit, the Chinese people were very polite and warm. They seemed especially enamored with fifteen-month-old Marre, with whom we strolled all around Shanghai and Beijing. What can I say? She is that adorable. I remember thinking, “This baby is a star!” It seemed that most Chinese had never seen anything like her before. As we walked around Shanghai, people would smile and point at the superpale blue-eyed baby girl with the mop of blonde curls. It was very flattering until we got to the Great Wall.

The Great Wall of China is one of the Seven Wonders of
the World, and for good reason. The views are captivating, and, given the number of tourists from China visiting the wall, it is an obvious source of national pride. There were a handful of tourists from across the globe and large tourist groups from all over China in bright-colored windbreakers. As Jeannie and I approached the Great Wall, we were flattered when three fifty-year-old Chinese women in matching orange windbreakers wanted a picture of Marre. “You want a picture of my beautiful daughter? But of course.” When we reached the Great Wall, there was another request from two teenage Chinese girls in purple windbreakers. “Well, sure.” Suddenly the requests became more frequent. Eventually the Chinese tourists stopped asking and started taking pictures of Marre sitting in her stroller. At one point, my fifteen-month-old was completely encircled by a crowd of Chinese tourists in bright windbreakers, all taking pictures of her. Suddenly the crowd was huge. A wave of fear poured over me. We could no longer see our baby, and I had this image of the crowd dissipating to reveal that the baby was gone. I yelled, “Enough, enough!” Well, of course, the crowd didn’t know English and must have thought I was barking, “Free pictures of the giant pale baby” or something. More colored windbreakers came over. Finally I had to push people out of the way and grab my little Marre from the Chinese paparazzi.

Of course, she was safe, and I went home that day realizing I was the proud father of the Eighth Wonder of the World. Or at least of China.

Last summer I took my family on vacation. Well, I should clarify. We went to Disney World. I had some shows in Orlando and Clearwater, so I figured I would take Jeannie and the kids to Disney. I’ll be a hero. Slam-dunk.

What I forgot was that Orlando in August is roughly the same temperature as the surface of the sun, and I don’t like going outside. What I also didn’t realize is that 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.

Remember when you went on vacation as a kid and you’d think to yourself, “Why is Dad always in a bad mood?” Well, now I understand. It’s amazing how much money it costs to be uncomfortable all day and listen to your children whine and complain. Yes, Disney is the “happiest place on earth” to a little kid, but it’s just too much stimulation. The rides, the
characters, the parade, the ice cream, and the candy every ten feet. They can’t handle it. They turn into monsters. “I want … everything!”

Disney is not a vacation. To me the term “Disney Vacation” is equivalent to the term “Chuck E. Cheese Fine Dining.” A vacation means lying poolside under a very large umbrella and people bringing you frozen drinks. I don’t know how we justify calling most family trips “vacations.” Where is the logic? “We’ve worked very hard to make our life here at home as comfortable and convenient as possible, so to reward ourselves, let’s travel to somewhere we’ve never been and try to survive for a week.” Most trips have that moment of waking up in a strange, uncomfortable bed and asking yourself, “Now how do I get coffee?” Rest assured, the coffee will be bad. And expensive. But I digress. Back to Disney.

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.