In this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Ophira Eisenberg sits down with longtime friend and comedian Jon Fisch to talk about becoming the parent he always knew he wanted to be—just not in the order he expected—starting with the moment he learned his girlfriend was pregnant while sitting across from his mother at a Cheesecake Factory in the Natick Mall. They trade stories about raising young kids during COVID, from how lockdown accidentally turned Jon’s son into an early, voracious reader thanks to curbside bookstore recommendations, to navigating a preemie birth amid constantly shifting hospital rules that changed by the nursing shift. The conversation drifts easily between creative life and parenting logic, including Jon’s observation that stand-up used to provide “purpose” at night until kids rewired the entire day, and how slowing down during the pandemic made comedy feel more enjoyable again. The heart of the episode lands on a darkly funny family legend involving his niece’s beloved owl lovey—one of many identical backups—which Jon confirms his brother once decapitated in a moment of exhausted bedtime brinkmanship, a parenting move so extreme it later came full circle when that same niece gifted her remaining owls to Jon’s newborn daughter.

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