In some cultures they don't name their babies right away. They wait until they see how the child develops. Like in Dances with Wolves. Unfortunately, our kids' names would be less romantic and poetic. "This is my oldest boy, Falls off His Tricycle, his friend, Dribbles His Juice, and my beautiful daughter, Allergic to Nuts."

Reiser riffs on the idea—popularly associated (often loosely) with certain Indigenous naming practices and dramatized in mainstream film—that a person’s name can reflect observed character or lived experience rather than parental preference. He comically transposes that romantic notion into contemporary suburban parenting, where a child’s defining “traits” are mundane mishaps, messes, and medical anxieties. The humor comes from deflating the poetic aura of names like those in *Dances with Wolves* into the petty realities of modern childhood, while also poking fun at parents’ tendency to narrate their kids through accidents and vulnerabilities. Beneath the joke is a gentle critique of how culture mythologizes “other” traditions while overlooking its own unglamorous truths.