I Need a Hero

I’m sure I have blogged before (maybe several times) about being a fossil in my career life as I approach retirement. Yesterday, that fact reasserted itself.

Yesterday, our staff took a group of high schoolers on a field trip that included a college campus visit and some “cultural” sites that many kids from our somewhat remote rural area do not experience.

I love for kids to experience live musical theater. Oh they get plenty of experience watching movies and listening to music, but only on dvd’s or iPods or other new technologies that adults struggle to keep pace with. Live theater is far different from film (at least in my mind).

We had the opportunity to see “Footloose” on stage, and since the plot is about high school students and since the soundtrack had such great tunes, I thought it would be a perfect project to introduce musical theater to the group. I should know better than thinking “perfect” describes anything especially in the secular world in this generation.

I guess I was not prepared for updates—the “updated” version of the stage play with the “updated” language and the “updated” dance moves and physical insinuations.

The music was still energetic and the story line was still pretty much the same, but that “updated” version was a visual demonstration of social change in just 15 years. I am not so naïve to think that many teens have only one vocabulary and that one vocabulary correlates with fossils, but still it is difficult for me. If the vocabulary and sexual innuendos were not enough of an indication of change, the costuming removed all doubt.

I will be the first to admit that I definitely have some elements of puritanical preferences, but I’ve been around long enough to witness the terribly sad results of behaviors that are too loose and values that have been laughingly trampled upon. I’ve seen so many children born as a result of those risky, unthinking behaviors and the school problems as well as life problems that follow. Sigh!

Still, I liked the music very much. I'm just sayin'

♫ “I need a hero
I’m holding on for a hero
‘till the morning light
He’s gotta be sure
And it’s gotta be soon
And he’s gotta be larger than life…” ♫