Teachers love to think that their students think they’re cool. Students love to laugh at the way that their teachers think they’re cool even though they’re desperately not.

I’m usually no different, but recently I achieved true “cool” status.

We were at the Game On exhibition at Melbourne’s ACMI for an excursion last week and were wandering the public gallery after our educational session. The exhibition contains hundreds of computer games spanning the time between Pong and the Nintendo Wii. A group of my kids were playing Guitar Hero and failing miserably. They were on the easy level and could barely bash a right note; the game kept on stopping mid-song and accusing them of failure. Noting an opportunity I purposefully strode up, snatched the guitar, set the game to the hard level, and BLEW THEM AWAY with 95% accuracy. The kids just stood there, mouths agape, in absolute awe of my Guitar Hero skillz. One of them finally breathed, “how did you do that, Ed?”

Just in case you’re wondering, it is hard to be as cool as me.