We’re all in this together . . .

“It is just like High School Musical!” That phrase and an accompanying squeal of excitement came as a visitor rounded the corner of Medford Area Senior High School Saturday evening and saw the trophy case outside of Raider Hall for the first time.

Last weekend, Medford Area Community Theatre presented “Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery.” My son, Alex, was part of the crew for the production so it became a family event to go see the show including my daughter, Beth, coming home from her summer job at Camp Birch Trails Girl Scout Camp near Merrill to see it.

On Saturday, Beth brought eight camp counselors and staff members home with her to see the show. Camp Birch Trails employs a number of international staff members each summer which is good for the girls attending the camp as well as an opportunity for the people from overseas to learn more about the United States. The group who came to see the show on Saturday included people from Ireland, South Africa and Australia.

Apparently high schools in those places don’t look quite like the ones here.

Given the ages of the young women in the group and the global reach of the Walt Disney corporation, they shared a common reference of having all grown up watching both the original 2006 movie High School Musical, and all its many sequels and spin-offs.

Those of us who have lived in the United States all our lives, take for granted things like high school sports being a big deal in the community or that students sit at desks that are a combination chair and writing surface or that you recite the Pledge of Allegiance each morning as part of your school day.

These things blew away the overseas visitors. After the show, my wife, who is a special education teacher at Medford Area Senior High School, gave the group a quick tour around the building. With the young women making comments comparing it to various movie and American television shows set in high schools that they had seen. They peeked through the door window and saw the classroom used for show choir and remarked “It’s just like in Glee!”

They were also weirdly excited by the cafeteria tables, and that the school logo was on the tables and they thought the student desks were just strange. I guess they use more tables and chairs rather than the uncomfortable chair-desk combinations that most of us grew up using and which are the bane on left-handed students everywhere.

Alex and Beth even sang the Medford alma mater and fight song for them. The ones who had school songs where they grew up noted that they are only sung by the students in choir and no one else even knows the words.

Since it was a nice evening, they walked across the parking lot to check out Raider Field and thought it was wild that these were all on a high school campus. Where they are from, youth sports is done through private community programs rather than in the schools.

My wife and I left them as they were walking through the parking lot toward their vehicle loudly singing “We Are All in This Together” and other songs from the High School Musical Soundtrack.

It is always good to be reminded that what we take for granted in our communities is not the same as everywhere else. As the saying about skinning cats goes, there are many ways of doing things and it is important to keep in mind that just because something is done a certain way here, doesn’t mean someone else’s solution to that challenge is any less for being different.

The world would be boring if we were all the same.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.