I remember my wife and I used to get on plane and see everybody else with their babies. They’d be putting strollers and car seats up above, and we’d think: Oh, please Lord, don’t make us go through that.

Reiser is jokingly recalling a pre-parenthood moment of smug relief: he and his wife, traveling unencumbered, watch other passengers struggle with infants and bulky gear and silently pray they never have to endure it. The humor comes from the candid admission of a thought many adults have before becoming parents, and from the implied reversal that life will eventually make them “go through that” anyway. Beneath the comedy is a familiar theme in Reiser’s work—how marriage and family life overturn youthful assumptions, replacing abstract opinions about parenting with lived experience and empathy.