I make a living teaching flute lessons, as you may know. Since the mechanics of playing the flute occur mostly inside one's body, I regularly employ analogies and descriptive imagery to help illustrate my points. Over time, my students become accustomed to this and we grow to understand each other.
I recently had a lesson with a talented young man. We were discussing the ending of his notes, something that I consider a lot myself. cue wavy lines and tinkly music...
Me: Sam, (not his real name) I notice that some of your notes are ending rather abruptly.
Sam: I know. (a little disheartened)
Me: I've been thinking a lot about this myself lately, and think that when I end notes like that, it kind of sounds like I'm choking a chicken.
Sam: (blinking) What did you just say?
Me: (launching into my description using full hand motions) Well, you know. Imagine you have this chicken and all of a sudden, you grab it by its neck and choke it. No more air would get through, but it would be pretty abrupt and probably wouldn't make a very nice sound.
Sam: Oh. I see. (kind of laughing) Choking the chicken. Got it.
Our lesson continued. It's not my best analogy (I have both a Twizzler and Olympic gymnastic/ice skating analogy of which I'm especially proud), but I thought it got the job done. And I really do think that sometimes notes sounds like that.
So this weekend while we're driving, I'm telling Jeff about this particular analogy and Sam's reaction and Jeff spits out his drink because he's laughing so hard. Seriously, there was diet Coke on the windshield. And I'm like, What?!
It turns out that 'choking the chicken' is a popular euphemism among teenage boys for, well, yeah, you know. And I was like, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Because, I have three pretty advanced teenage boy students right now, and I'm pretty sure I've said this to all of them.
Oh my god.
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3 comments:
This just made my morning!
omg--too funny. I had a theory prof who was dicussing metric modulation and Brahms and he used the phrase "if I were to stand here and beat off..." I lost it--sadly I was the only one gutterminded enough to catch it at first...
LOL!
Oh my god. My eyes are watering from laughing. :)
Another friend of mine had a male student get uh, excited during a lesson and they were both very embarrassed. His mom sent him to the lesson next week with a huge box of strawberries.
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