A new class of gamers.
Spanish class is an unlikely forum for a budding underground DS community. Yet, during the course of my years in high school, my Spanish class served as just that: a haven for 10 or so teen gamers that had discovered the joys of wireless handheld gaming.
The whole thing started with an experimental bout of PictoChat between a classmate and me in which we drafted an animation of the teacher conducting an unmentionable activity that he had been rumored to take part in. Needles to say, this caught the eyes of surrounding classmates. Soon our small PictoChat session expanded to include regular games of the Metroid Prime Hunters demo between several students.

The unnamed teacher never had any idea what was going on, and we assumed that he thought all of the silver Nintendo DS systems that would flip open at class start were just fancy Palm Pilots, or some other non-fun-related high-tech device. Soon, his lack of concern resulted in greater student participation. Students that would have never been caught dead gaming purchased systems, and Nintendo's knack for releasing quality multiplayer titles kept our group fueled and growing.
Since the students in the class were essentially constant over the course of each year of Spanish, the group was able to maintain the multilingual multiplayer momentum. I was, for a brief window in time, the Animal Crossing overlord. Soon after, class turned into a venue for Mario Kart tournaments. Even the Mario Kart demo provided us with days of enjoyment - provided we never let the DS lose its charge.

So it was that unlikely PictoChat session that ushered in several years of unnoticed gaming bliss. Gaming that included not only stereotypical gamers such as myself, but also those that would have never before considered having gaming be a recurring part of their lives. Ultimately, the situation was cracked down on due to the discovery of yet another unsavory PictoChat message, and the gaming was limited to lunch hour. Yet the group would have never existed were it not for our teacher's initial negligence, a lack of link cables, and a simple art-sharing application.