High School Musical.

High School Musical is my jam. Growing up, we had DSTV until I was about 5 years old. That was about 3 years before High School Musical (HSM) was released. I had an American neighbour who was a really close friend of mine at the time and when I was 8 years old, the year HSM was released, my friend, being American, had the movie on DVD before it aired on Disney Channel in South Africa/Namibia. She graciously lent the DVD to me and I felt like the coolest kid on the block because I watched this incredible musical (that would soon become iconic) before anyone else I knew. I would watch that DVD almost every single day and sometimes even multiple times a day. I was obsessed. I forced my brother to watch with me and we’d sing and dance along to all the jams in front of the television. It was incredible. From there the obsession only grew and by the time HSM 3 came out you would have had to kill me to stop me from watching that film the day it made it to the box office.

I’ll never forget that day at the movie theatre. Premier day, Friday afternoon, me and primary school squad are on a mission to watch Troy and Gabriella fall in and out of love on the big screen. The cinema was overbooked and PACKED, we could barely find empty seats in the sea of children, teenagers, and adults but we did, finally. However, about 10 minutes into the movie a woman approaches us with her children and tells us we’re in her seats and we should move. We tell her she’s mistaken and these are our seats (the thing is, though, there were other people in our seats and we were too afraid to say anything to them because they were adults and we were like 10) Then the lady shows us her tickets as proof and embarrassingly, we have no choice but to stand up and move. We ended up sitting on the floor of the staircase because the theatre was so full but we didn’t care because Troy and Gabriella were singing and waltzing on the roof while it was raining and it was so damn romantic.

Usually, childhood memories such as these stay what they are; childhood memories. However, when something touches your heart and soul as HSM did mine, it’s hard to leave it in the box of old stuff along with your teddy bear and baby clothes. It’s difficult for me to move on and accept HSM as just a phase in my life because honestly, that trilogy is the only thing that can consistently, without fail, put me in a state of euphoria. So yes, till this day, whenever I feel sad or nostalgic I go on a HSM movie marathon and watch all three movies while binge eating popcorn. I even recently downloaded the soundtrack of all three movies onto my iPod so I can experience nostalgic joy on the go and I listen to those songs almost every day. High School Musical truly fills my heart with bliss and I don’t think I will ever stop enjoying Sharpay and Ryan bop to the top.