Picket Fence Post

While walking through Stop & Shop I spotted a 75 percent discount bin filled with Halloween stuff. At the top of the heap of candy were many bags of High School Musical candy. High School Musical strawberry pop rocks to be exact. I was surprised to see them because I didn’t know they existed, and believe me, my house has plenty of HSM paraphernalia.

Then, while walking through the frozen food aisle, I spotted Troy, Gabriella and Sharpay again, looking out at me from the other side of the freezer door. This time, they were pictured on a box of waffles. Photos on the box showed a waffle with ”EHS” (for East High School) on one side. Another waffle, right next to Troy, had a crest for “High School Musical” on it . . . because when you think of High School Musical, of course, you think of waffles. And strawberry pop rocks.

Sometimes I wonder what these marketing folks are thinking. Do  they think parents will just capitulate and buy their kids anything with HSM on it?

Shortly after Shrek 3 came out, there was a boom in Shrek merchandise, particularly on all manner of food products all over the grocery store. One day when my kids spotted Shrek on a cereal box, they asked if I’d buy it.

“What does Shrek know about cereal?” I asked, speedily pushing the cart past the neatly arranged boxes as they looked longingly over their shoulders at the green ogre. Shrek knows as much about cereal as Troy Bolton does about waffles.

High School Musical 3 opened this weekend and raked in $42 million, the highest opening weekend for a musical . . . in case you’ve been living under a rock and weren’t aware of this fact.

Being the parent of a 10-year-old girl, there’s no way I could’ve been out of the HSM 3 info loop even if I wanted to be. So we had a plan of attack as to how to make sure we could get to see the film on opening weekend without waiting in huge lines or getting shut out. On Friday, the day the movie opened, I drove to the theater and bought tickets for the 3:30 showing on Saturday. The theater attendant suggested that we arrive a half-hour early on Saturday to assure that we’d all get seats together because, “I’m sure it’ll sell out.”

I thought we were in good shape. But by the time The Girl went to her 10:30 soccer game on Saturday morning, almost half her team had already seen the flick, and one gal couldn’t contain herself and leaked numerous spoilers on the sidelines, irritating The Girl who was starting to feel as though she was behind the curve for not seeing HSM 3 on opening night. Sadly, HSM 3 was also a topic of conversation among the parents on the soccer sidelines.

How was the movie? It was Disney wholesome, very peppy, like Grease, only without the teen pregnancy and drag racing. The Girl loved it. The two boys pretended not to be thrilled by it – they have cool reps to protect ya know – though I know that they found one of the scenes involving Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) and Chad Danforth (Corbin Bleu) break dancing and play fighting with swords atop rusty old cars in a junk yard “sick” (as in cool).

That scene actually made me sad. The song was about the friendship Troy and Chad had nurtured since they were little boys. As they faced decisions about college, they realized they might not be able to spend as much time together as they had in high school. At one point, the actors disappeared behind a junk car and two little boys, meant to be a little Troy and little Chad, busted out some cute moves. Looking over at my two boys, I didn’t want to let myself imagine them as teenaged boys deciding where to go to college.

Item #1: Late Night Sox

I, along with many members of Red Sox Nation, am bleary-eyed today after staying up (or trying) to watch last night’s Red Sox playoff game in California that ended in the wee hours of the morning. While the Sox were triumphant, I must admit that there were about a half-dozen times when I nodded off for extended chunks of the game. (I should’ve had that iced coffee I was talking about drinking at 7.)

And with the pressure to be remain wide awake tonight in order to watch the historic vice presidential debate – when debates are boring, they often require caffeine in order to make it through and actually understand what’s being said — I’m going to keep the good coffee grower folks in business.

Item #2: The Duggar Family of 19 Makes Me Tired

Some call it a reality show. I call it a horror show. Just the very concept of a household teeming with 17, soon to be 18 children, is enough to send me back to the warm, cozy confines of my bed, and pull the covers over my head (and after late night Sox games, retiring to bed is even more alluring).

But in a world where I’m fatigued just trying to work and take care of three kids, I know I’m not the only American who is fascinated with just how a large family – a super-sized one in this case – actually makes it through the days without murder, mayhem and graffiti.

Enter: 17 Kids and Counting. On The Learning Channel. The premiere episode of the reality show this week featured a trip by the collection of “J” first-named kids and their parents to New York City where they were announcing — to the kids and the public — on the Today Show  that Michelle Duggar was pregnant with baby number 18. Just watching the kids pack (My Lord the closets! The clothing! Looked like Filene’s Basement!) was enough to make me want to cry . . . or maybe that was my own personal sleep deprivation.

And this woman home schools the kids. Oy! At least they have one grandmother around to help out.

Item #3: HSM 3 Trailer

The Girl yesterday inquired about the exact date of the theatrical release of High School Musical 3. (October 24 for those of you keeping track at home.) When I Googled it and happened upon the movie’s trailer, she was enthralled. Parents of tweens, prepare for the promotional onslaught.

Item #1: Kid-Sick Parents

Read any of the slew of news stories recently about “kid-sick” parents who, when sending their children off to sleep-away camp, insist on constant communication with their kids and, in some cases, flouted the camp “no cell phone” rules by smuggling a phone into their offspring’s stuff? Well I have, and so has syndicated columnist Betsy Hart, the host of the “It Takes a Parent” radio show. She had me on as a guest to discuss what she calls the “Over-Tethered Generation.” You can listen to the show and sparkling conversation (at one point I use the pithy phrase “going all 007″) here.

Item #2: Tiger Beat

I had no idea that Tiger Beat magazine was still being published. To me, Tiger Beat means Shawn Cassidy, Rick Springfield and Mark Hamill. It resurrects a variety of memories involving flavored Bonnie Bell lip gloss, rainbow shoelaces for my hard Nike sneakers, a large comb sticking out of the right back pocket of my Jordache jeans and chewing multiple pieces of Bubble Yum.

To my daughter, however, who literally squealed when she spotted a Tiger Beat in the local drugstore this week and begged me to buy it – with all my nostalgia, how could I not? — Tiger Beat means the Jonas Brothers, Demi Lovato & the Camp Rock crew, some teen named Selena, the ubiquitous Miley Cyrus and, of course, the cast of High School Musical I, II and XXIV: The Social Security Years.

At the time of this post, posters of the aforementioned folks have been tacked all over her bedroom walls, alongside an inspirational, framed gymnastics poster I put up and the framed HSM poster I tastefully placed in just the right location in her room. It now looks like a Tiger Beat explosion in there, distinctly un-Pottery Barn Kid. Her ‘tweens have officially arrived.

Item #3: Obama Girls’ Crazy Sked

Any regular reader of the Picket Fence Post is familiar with my vociferous objections to over-stuffed kids’ schedules and the havoc those schedules wreak on family life. (As the beginning of the boys’ first football season creeps nearer — with four practices/week starting in August — I’m already getting the dry heaves about having to get them to everything on time while trucking my daughter to her travel soccer stuff. Oh, and have my own personal and work life.)

So when I read an AP story about the extra-curricular schedule for Michelle and Barack Obama’s girls — ages 10 and 7 — I was astonished. While Michelle Obama does have her mother at home to help her with the girls when Michelle is campaigning for her husband’s presidential bid, and Barack is busy on a global odyssey, imagine trying to keep up this kid schedule with everything else that’s going on with the Obama family: Piano and tennis lessons for both girls; soccer, dance and drama for the 10-year-old and gymnastics and tap for the 7-year-old.

Just reading that list — and knowing that Dad is never home and Mom has massive campaign obligations — I can’t help but wonder how in the world they accomplish all of this with just the help of one grandma.

Item #4: Girls & Math

Forget that stupid talking Barbie doll which years ago uttered, “Math class is tough.” A new study commissioned by the National Science Foundation says that, when it comes to boys and girls there is parity in their achievements. “The researchers looked at the average of the test scores of all students, the performance of the most gifted children and the ability to solve complex math problems,” wrote Tamar Lewin in the New York Times. “They found, in every category, that girls did as well as boys.”

A study co-author told the Times: “Now that enrollment in advanced math courses is equalized, we don’t see gender differences in test performance . . . But people are surprised by these findings, which suggests to me that the stereotypes are still there.”

So let’s take up the cause and send our girls the message that they’re just as good as boys in the numbers and E=MC squared arena. You go (calculate) girls.

Image credit: Associated Press.