by Martin FitzPatrick
I turned on the car radio in time
to hear the last minute or so
of “Sweet Emotion”; then the DJ
came on and said, “Some Aerosmith here
this morning . . . one of my favorite
teachable moments of this year—
I learned a few months ago that there’s
an Aerosmith cover band in Europe
called . . . wait for it . . . Eurosmith.”
Now, in the words of Fred Schneider,
there’s one thing I do know: one of us
does not possess a full understanding
of the phrase teachable moment.
I briefly tried to reconcile in my mind
the two conceptions as I drove,
and the result was as if the Zen koan
about one hand clapping got together
with the joke about the surrealists
screwing in a lightbulb, but in its excitement
stepped on its own punchline
and blurted out the fish two beats early.