My friend has a sixteen-month-old. The baby's crawling around, and he has an accident in his diaper. And the mother comes over and says, "Isn't that adorable? Brandon made a gift for Daddy." I'm thinking this guy must be real easy to shop for on Father's Day.

Shandling’s joke hinges on the gap between sentimental parental language and the blunt reality of childcare. By calling a diaper accident “a gift for Daddy,” the mother reframes an unpleasant mess as something cute and meaningful—an example of how adults project affection and narrative onto a baby’s involuntary actions. The punchline (“easy to shop for on Father’s Day”) flips that forced sweetness into absurd literalism: if excrement counts as a “gift,” then Father’s Day shopping becomes grotesquely simple. The humor is observational and slightly cynical, typical of Shandling’s persona, which often punctures social niceties by taking them at face value.