Gaming with My Grandma: A Hilarious Fortnite Journey Subtitle:

Athour. ....shahjhan

Hilarious Fortnite Journey

I never imagined I’d one day hear my 73-year-old grandmother scream, “BUILD FASTER, THEY’RE SHOOTING AT US!”—but here we are. In the digital battleground of Fortnite, Grandma June had somehow transformed from a retired librarian into the most intense, battle-hardened squadmate I never knew I needed.

It started as a joke.

I was visiting her over the holidays, PlayStation in tow, because how else does one survive rural internet and boiled cabbage? She caught me mid-match, headset on, eyes glued to the screen. She squinted at the graphics like someone deciphering modern art.

“Is this that Fort-fight game?” she asked.

“It’s called Fortnite, Grandma,” I replied, half-laughing. “It’s like hide-and-seek with guns. And very bright colors.”

She nodded sagely. “Looks like a cartoon with a death wish.”

I didn’t think much of it until the next day. After breakfast, she marched into the living room, arms crossed.

“I read out it online last night. Apparently, it’s a battle royale. I was an undefeated queen at dodgeball in ’67. Let’s play.”

Reader, I caved. It was either that or another game of Bingo with her book club. I set her up with a controller, adjusted the sensitivity, and dropped us into Duo mode.

The first few matches were... rough.

“Why is this man in a banana suit hitting me with a pickaxe?”

“That’s just Peely. He’s friendly. Well, unless he’s not. Just run.”

She’d crouch behind trees thinking it made her invisible, shout “oh dear” every time she had to reload, and try to talk to NPCs like they were real people. She asked Jonesy how his family was. When he didn’t answer, she said he was rude.

But around our sixth match, something changed. She got her first elimination. A careless player ran past her hiding spot, and with sheer panic and button-mashing, she managed to down him. She let out a laugh that still echoes in my soul.

“I GOT ONE!” she screamed. “I SHOT HIM WITH MY LITTLE GUN!”

That moment was the birth of GamGamTheGoat, her newly christened username. And GamGam didn’t stop there.

She started watching YouTube tutorials. She asked questions like “What’s a good drop zone for low-aggression matches?” and “Is it better to third-party or play the edge of the storm?” She even started building—albeit only one-wall panic shacks—but progress is progress.

One night, I caught her muttering to herself at the kitchen table.

“What’s going on, Grandma?” I asked.

“Just practicing my editing techniques with a salt shaker and two forks. These represent ramps.”

We becamen unlikely duo. Me: a casual gamer who played to relax. Her: a laser-focused competitor who referred to eliminations as “sending people to the lobby of shame.”

And then came the day we won our first match.

It was us versus a sweatsuit-wearing teenager who tried to box-fight us into oblivion. I panicked. She didn’t. While I distracted him by missing every shot humanly possible, she flanked from the high ground. One clean burst from her rifle, and he was down.

The victory screen flashed across the TV: “Victory Royale.”

She stared at it, blinked, then whispered, “I’m cracked, bro.”

I nearly fell off the couch laughing.

From there, she was unstoppable. We played every day of my visit. She even knitted a controller cozy and claimed it gave her “better aim.” She talked about buying a headset so she could “trash talk like the children do.”

But what struck me most wasn’t the skill she developed or her unexpectedly savage callouts (“He’s low, push him like it’s a Black Friday sale!”). It was how the game made her light up.

She told me later that it reminded her of playing strategy board games with my grandfather, who’d passed away years ago. It gave her something new to learn, something exciting to look forward to, and, most importantly, a way to connect with me that wasn’t just “How’s school?” or “Did you eat today?”

Gaming gave her a piece of youth she thought she’d lost—and gave me a whole new view of her. She wasn’t just Grandma June who made killer peach cobbler. She was GamGamTheGoat, destroyer of lobbies, queen of clutch revives, and my favorite squadmate of all time.

Epilogue:

Now back in my apartment, I still get daily texts:

“Landed Tilted, chaos. Got 2 elims. How do you counter builds?”

“Do you want to run trios tonight? Got a friend from my knitting circle who mains sniper.”

“Why do children scream into mics so much? Is this normal?”



She’s planning to stream soon. Her tagline?

> “Seniors build slower but hit harder.”

And I believe her.