How to parent like a comedian, Gaffigan style | Jeannie Gaffigan

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JEANNIE GAFFIGAN

It was only by chance that Jeannie Gaffigan found out she had a pear-sized tumor on her brain stem. During a visit to her kid's pediatrician, the doctor noticed something off about Jeannie Gaffigan's hearing, which led to the diagnosis.

She needed to have immediate brain surgery. Gaffigan describes this highly stressful and uncertain time in her as traumatic—and deeply hilarious, says Gaffigan. Comedy, she says, can be used to process your traumas.

A comedy writer by trade, she obsessively documented the experience and asked people who visited her in hospital to make notes and lists, which she later turned into her memoir When Life Gives You Pears.

Jeannie Gaffigan is a director, producer and comedy writer. She co-wrote seven comedy specials with her husband Jim Gaffigan, the last four of which received Grammy nominations. Jeannie was the head writer and executive producer of the critically acclaimed The Jim Gaffigan Show, which was loosely based on her and Jim's life. She collaborated with Jim on two New York Times bestsellers, Dad Is Fat and Food: A Love Story. Jeannie, with the help of her two eldest children and some other crazy moms, created The Imagine Society, Inc., a not-for-profit organization that connects youth-led service groups. Most impressively, she grew a tumor on her brain stem roughly the size of a pear.

Jeannie presently lives in New York City with her five children, two dogs, and one “superdad” husband, Jim Gaffigan.
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TRANSCRIPT: Co-parenting as comedians is just completely unique to our own situation because we are, Jim and I are actually really different comedians. I know that sounds really weird because we write together and a lot of times especially with all the standup, that’s all his point of view. So I can really write in Jim’s point of view. If I bring my point of view into Jim’s comedy it’s not funny. I’m funny as Jim but in Jim’s point of view. In Jim’s show I can make observations within his point of view like here is something that you would say in this situation that would be really funny but a lot of the things that he has, kind of his MO are things that really disagree with. I disagree with a lot of his funniness even though I know it’s funny. But my lifestyle I would never do some of the things or make the observations that he makes. I have like a Ph.D. in Jim Gaffigan. Like I know what he finds funny. I mean I can’t do what he does. He’s the head writer of his comedy. I know what my role is and I know that I make it better, but I do it as Jim.

Conversely, when we were writing, when he was writing Dad Is Fat which is the, it’s a bestselling book called Dad Is Fat that he wrote about being a father of five kids in a two bedroom apartment. And I was there in the two bedroom apartment so I knew what he was doing and what was funny. But that’s when we really found out that he is the observational comedian and the wordsmith and I’m the essayist. I am the storyteller. Like it was pretty clear that we needed to stay working together because it was just enhancing everything we did. I brought a little bit more of a storytelling aspect to the standup comedy as well as the books. And he also in my storytelling could be like you know what’s really funny, you know, I wrote the book but he read it and wrote some notes in the margin. I’m like oh, now you’re me but you’re doing the wordsmithing and I’m doing the storytelling rather than you doing the wordsmithing and I’m coming in at the end with the storytelling. And I think that our collaboration became very, very clear when we wrote the Jim Gaffigan Show because now it was Jim as a character, Jeannie as a character and all these other crazy characters and the kids as characters. We also have a very different opinion about a lot of stuff with parenting. I believe in much more of a reward-punishment situation and dangling the carrot and Jim totally doesn’t believe in that.

He believes in just get rid of all the iPads. That’s the punishment. And I’m like more if you do A, B and C at the end of the week you get your paycheck which is the iPad. It’s training for life and all this stuff. And he’s much more of a go to your room type like the end is nothing. And I’m like what do they have to work for if they have nothing to lose. We have a whole thing going on here. But it also turns into a very comic conversation. It’s a very comical conversation because we can’t – or else it’s just going to spiral into we have to find something that we both can grab onto so we compromise through comedy.