At my friend’s Red Egg celebration, I decided that if I had a daughter I’d name her Posterity.

After all, don’t we do everything we do for the sake of Posterity?  Don’t we want to do right by Posterity?  Don’t we want Posterity to remember us?  This way I could be literal about the whole thing and cut out the metaphorical middleman.

But then I realized that this name wouldn’t pass the Playground test. It’s very important that parents to choose a name based on how easily it can become a playground taunt.  It’s a short hop and skip from “Posterity” to “Posterior,” so forget that idea.

I actually have a theory that the world’s perfect baby name is “Asshead.” Any kid with that name would be invincible on the playground.  I mean, there’s absolutely nowhere for bullies to go with it:

“Let’s go pick on Asshead!”

“Good idea.  Hey, Asshead, you...uh...hmmm...”

“Eh, later for this.  We can’t do anything to him that his folks didn’t already do.”

“You’re right, screw this. Let’s go beat up on Gaylord.”

In the case of my friend, he had an additional layer of complexity to deal with: he had to choose a name for his daughter that wouldn’t be mangled by his Chinese relatives.  He didn’t quite succeed, either; “Haley” is often referred to “Harry” in his extended family.  But his first choice for a name had to be discarded altogether, because--I am not making this up--"Madison" was being pronounced as “Medicine.”

That could potentially lead to a disastrous situation.  Because it’s pretty much understood that if you’re an aging Chinese relative and you give a shout out, you’re happy when someone sticks a beautiful bundle of granddaughterly joy into your arms.  But in an emergency, when you’re actually asking for your heart pills, you had better goddamn well get your heart pills.