As of the end of April, I finished teaching here in France. My contract is up, and my hooligans will have to find someone new to torment with questions about America, guns, and pancakes. One thing I will say for my less-than-enthusiastic English students: they always perked up at the mention of video games. However, they really baffled me a few weeks ago with their “generational” gap. And I’m only two or three years older than them.
I was teaching a lesson that required students to walk up to the board one by one. However, I couldn’t figure out why they kept stopping to stare at my desk. Eventually I realized it was because I’d left out my keys. Like a proper dork, I have an Nintendo 64 controller key chain on my keys–which, sickeningly enough, matches an equally adorable like N64 Scott keeps on his. When I held it up to ask what was so fascinating, my hooligans proclaimed, “Madame, c’est vieux ça!” (the equivalent of “Wow, that’s old!”). They then proceeded to ask me what rock I’d been living under since the year 1996.
As the words “retro” and “fangirl pride” don’t make it into the French national ESL vocabulary, I let the issue go at “Si c’est vieux, moi aussi, je suis vieille” (”If it’s old, I’m old too”). Still, I was only eleven when the N64 came out, and I loved the living daylights out of that thing. Not only should these whipper snappers learn some basic math, they should have more respect for the roots of the games they play today–whether or not they played them themselves.
Wow, I feel like I should get a rocking chair and stick an handful of unwrapped lemon candies in my pocket. In my day, there was no such thing as online play, plus we walked to school uphill both ways…
May 6th, 2008 at 4:57 am
If you are old by having a N64 keychain then I should have been off high school a LONG time ago since I pack a NES MP3 player me and Lubeman made. the only thing game related that can make me look older is attaching my Atari 2600 joystick to myself… how about as belt buckle! so that it can symbolise my love for Retro gaming xD
May 6th, 2008 at 6:43 am
‘fangirl pride’ definitely won’t make sense in French but ‘retro’ does, although nowadays ‘vintage’ would work best.
As you probably know the only trick you need to use word borrowed from the English language in French, is to pronounce them oddly and not to expect them to match their original sense too much. But then, to be fair, it’s the same the other way round.
A+!
May 6th, 2008 at 7:07 am
Huh, I’ve never heard anyone here use either “vintage” or “retro.” So glad to know they work, so that the next time a French teenager calls me old I have something to retort with! Granted, they were my English students, so in theory they should have understood what I was saying to them in English, but that would require them caring :).
Also, I love writing A+. So A+!
May 6th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Ahh, it happens. Almost my entire list of favorite games ever(http://fulldecc.livejournal.com/174187.html) would be considered “old school” games (Playstation 1 or before). I’m sure a lot of that is because they are games I grew up with, but still I consider old games more fun because of the “pickup and play factor”. Due to zero loading times and the uncomplicated nature of those games, they’re great to play even if you only have 5 minutes to spare.
As Guns’N'Roses once said “if love is blind, guess I’ll buy myself a cane”. So if liking and playing old games makes me old, I guess I’ll buy myself a cane.
May 6th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
You’re young enough to be a college student. How does that make you “old” again?
May 7th, 2008 at 1:30 am
Long live N64
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8q-elxC6gU
May 7th, 2008 at 5:46 am
Well, technically Dan, I’m 22 (oh no, getting close to 23!), but I hear you. Like I said, I was only a few years older than my students–who were in a post high school program–which makes it all the more ridiculous.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
I didnt realise you were that young. N64 does not make you old Atari 2600 makes you old.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
“Well, technically Dan, I’m 22″
I know, I did the math. I was born the same year as you, and I’m still in college (oh no, getting close to graduating!)
And your students were in a post high school program? I think they’re the wierd ones. I’ve seen this year’s Freshmen break out an NES in the dorm room lounges every so often.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Er, in the dorm lounges. Don’t know how that extra “room” got in there.
May 9th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
N64 Retro, my tuchus.
I go all the way back to Home Pong.
You damned kids. Get off my lawn.
PS - Bonnie, the Kerek say “hello.”