High School 'Musing'-cal

This afternoon we took the kids to see High School Musical 3. Yes, I know it has been out for a couple of months, but between the busy-ness of the holidays and the cost of movies these days, we waited until it was at the dollar movie before we went. It’s just too expensive for a family of five to go to the movies anymore. I’m sure there’s some sort of mathematical formula…factor in the popcorn and sodas, and multiply that times the number of trips to the bathroom, and it works out to about a dollar a minute for each minute that I actually get to watch! So, we’ll just wait until it’s at the discount cinema. ;)

High School Musical 3… can’t say I loved it with a capital ‘L’… it was certainly no High School Musical 2! The series is pure cheese, as you know if you’ve seen any of them, but there’s just something that is so addictive about those darn songs. Even Libby stomps around the house, belting out about how she wants all things… “Fab-a-lous”.

HSM 3 was okay (the kids really liked it), but I felt like the previous ones were more fun…more ‘Disney’… a little lighter and fluffier. The third one was kind of heavy-handed, and at one point, I leaned over to Phil, and told him, “Gee, I just don’t remember high school being this fraught with inner turmoil.” Maybe it was for others, but I’m a simple girl, I guess.

I also don’t remember being so regretful about my high school career ending. I guess if my senior year was on the tail end of an amazing cocktail of Disney, singing, & dancing on cafeteria tables (the table dancing didn’t come around until college for me ;), I might have been a little more like Troy and Gabriella, gazing around at all my friends, with tears in my eyes, as we held hands in our red graduation gowns, humming, ‘We’re All in this Together’.

I, on the other hand, couldn’t get the heck out of dodge fast enough. Don’t get me wrong. I had fun in high school. I had some good friends. I had some good times and made some fun memories. But, for the life of me, I can’t really remember feeling wistful that it was finished when it was. I was pretty darn stoked, if I recall, (and if I recall the language of the decade, ‘stoked’ was in usage then).

College awaited… a whole new world of dorm life, new friends, challenging classes, and other people who, like me, were venturing out of the various tiny towns where they’d grown up, in search of independence, and possibly, their own identity.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll see all the HSM characters reprising their roles for college life… but I doubt it. HSM, like the musical, Grease, isn’t supposed to be reality. It’s supposed to be an idealized version of the high school experience. That whole, ‘these are the best days of your life’ theory... the ‘glory days’ philosophy.

Hopefully, for most of us, that’s not the case. ;)