Overview
The private, inexplicable and yet universal ways in which families communicate with each other in order to function or at least avoid the urge to hit each other with forks at the dining room table - illuminated by one of America’s favorite family comics.
Tom Papa is a comedic polymath: in his stand-up (five Netflix Specials), on his two radio shows (“Come to Papa” and “What a Joke with Papa and Fortune”), his podcast “Breaking Bread with Tom Papa” and even in his Food Network series “Baked”, he decodes the idiosyncrasies of human behavior. He’s a family comic, a date-night comic, a comic with a warm, optimistic, gentle yet incisive vibe.
In his new book, his fourth, Papa, on the verge of being an empty nester, turns his wry eye on the nuclear family, with its distinctive tribal rituals, personality and vocabulary. Each hilarious chapter, begins with a common familial phrase such as “Does This Look OK to You?”, “Stop Touching Your Sister”, “Do You Live in a Barn?”, “There’s Never Anything to Eat Around Here!”, “I’ll be in the Car” and thirty-four others. Papa makes readers feel a little less alone as he shines a light on the daily struggles that unite everyone who has ever been a part of a family.
From You’ve Got to Jiggle the Handle:
“Oh My God, We’re Late Again!”
When a request came into the house from the outside world it threw our entire lives into chaos. Inside our house we played by our own rules. Hanging around in our dungarees, playing, watching tv on the beanbags, the pets running wild. There wasn’t any urgency or rules. The only way we kept time was before dad got home and after dad got home.
The outside world had rules. The outside world ran on dates and times and documents. Asking our family to participate in the order of the outside world and show up on time to an event at school or come to the DMV with the right paperwork was like asking a porcupine to attend a black-tie dinner. It wasn’t expected. It wasn’t natural. And it surprised us every time.
“It’s 2:58! Jen has dance at 3?! Oh my God, we’re late again!”
This immediately became a problem for everyone in the family. My mother would curse and scream out orders as if we were forced to flee a fire that we started.
“Someone find her dance bag. Where are her dance shoes? Stop screwing around and look for her tap shoes. Where are her tights? Has anyone seen her tights?”
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