One of the most satisfying experiences in life is getting off the perfect “zinger.” When the right words pop into your head and then out of your mouth with perfect timing, completely undoing your opponent’s argument and precisely making your point: that’s almost heaven. More often than not, when that kind of synchronized synapse occurs it is fired off more by passion than by planning.

For me it’s more not than often. I think of the perfect zinger, but hours or days later. I’m an expert in what the French call “l’esprit de l’escalier,” or “the spirit of the staircase.” In other words, the perfect words occur to us, the perfect repartee, the perfect witticism, but only after we leave the room and go down the stairs. Victorian English translated this French phrase as “afterwit.”

In this we…