Fail!

Thirty years ago, when I was in junior high, the one-word retort “psych” was in vogue. It was a shortened version of “psychological” as in “You were psyched out.” If you just pulled a fast one on your buddy or tricked him, you could add insult to injury by yelling “psych.”

Well, it’s not 1978 and we’re not in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

The equivalent I hear in Hong Kong –and that my daughters have quickly adopted- is “Fail!” As the term implies, you use it when your buddy tries to do something cool or funny and . . . fails.

Your friend tries to hurdle over that “Caution, Floor is wet” sign and trips. “Fail!”

Your classmate tosses you your pencil case but it lands way short. “Fail!”

The thing that keeps it from becoming completely obnoxious, is that I hear students –including my daughters- using it on themselves as much as on their friends and classmates. Forgot to pack socks for p.e.? “Fail.” No one laughs at your knock-knock joke? “Fail.”

I want to be young and hip so I tried it once when one of my students retrieved only five literature books from the shelf for his row of six kids. “Fail.” Instead or raising my hip quotient, it just got me a bunch of rolled eyes from my students -including my daughter. “Yeah, nice try Mr. VanNoord, but I don’t think so.”

Fail!

-Jack