How High School Musical warps my sons reality

Considering I am not a big fan of much of the  pop culture aimed at youth, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed High School Musical. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t be that surprised. After all I was a drama geek in high school, went to drama summer camp, and grew up on a diet of Grease and Fame. I was probably one of the few who not only saw The Pirate Movie when it came out in the early 80′s, but believed Kristy McNichol should have won an Oscar. So maybe I shouldn’t be that surprised to learn that I actually like the High School Musical movies.

For the most part, the messages are positive, the role models are decent and the skank factor for the girls is not off the chart (you can read the review from Common Sense Media & get their take on the series). Even the mean girl is not all that mean, and most of the movies are good clean fun with lots of dancing & singing that I expected my ballet loving singing & dancing daughter would respond to. And she did.

What I didn’t expect was the way my son would react. He also loves them, not so much for the singing and dancing, but because of the sports. High School Musical has turned my son into a full fledged wannabe jock. You name it – basketball, baseball, golf, he wants to try it all, and I have spent a good deal of my summer in the backyard shooting Little Tikes hoops and tossing balls for him to whack at with his plastic bats. It has been a hoot to see him get so excited about sports, whatever the source of his inspiration.

There is one problem, however (hence the title of the post). Knowing his love of all things baseball recently, I decided to introduce him to the sport at the pro level, so we sat down to watch a game on TV. After watching for about 10 minutes, the little guy turned to me.

“Dad.”

“Yes.”

“When do they start dancing?”

Seems that in his HSM influenced world, this is how ball games go.

Let’s see Roy Halladay bust it like that!

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