Perry the Platy-bus, our kids' Woodstock

Three months. Twelve weeks. Ninety-plus days. More than 2,000 hours.

Yet inexplicably, summer's expanse of time seems to increase the pressure on parents to do something special with it for their kids.

There's camp, afternoons by the pool, a visit to the grandparents, and the annual trip to the zoo. But what about that flash of summer quicksilver, the "Wow!" moment they could put at the top of their back-to-school essay, the thing that would one day allow them to say, "Remember that time . . .?"

"People have this unconscious idea that they are free to do things in the summer they wouldn't otherwise do," says Jonah Berger, professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. "Even though summer vacation is really just a school break, everyone wants to be part of the ritual."

It came to me from the television in the other room.

"I know what we're going to do today," said the animated, pointy-headed form of Phineas Flynn, one of the stars of the hit series Phineas and Ferb. The award-winning Disney Channel show about two stepbrothers and their quest to make every day of summer special is packed with musical numbers, pop-culture references, obscure factoids, and subtle gags of sight, sound, and style. Of course, the brothers have a pet platypus who is a secret agent.

Surely, taking my two youngest, ages 9 and 12, to the kickoff of Perry the Platy-bus tour had all the makings of a magical memory: a journey to Times Square, a show and characters with cachet for the tween set, and the scarcity value of a sighting of Perry the Platy-bus - making only seven stops across the country.

Could it be the event that would eventually seep into their cultural-phenomenon consciousness? Or would it be one more overly orchestrated extravaganza sold to my kids like a must-have LED spinning top?

In the age of immediate information dissemination and marketing madness, is it even possible to plot a pilgrimage that would one day be coveted by generations not yet born - a la Woodstock or Lollapalooza or Burning Man?

"There's a temptation to romanticize that what happened in the past is real and what happens today is synthetic," says Bob Rehak, professor in the film and media studies program at Swarthmore College. "But companies have learned from what people take from festivals or blockbusters in the past, and now they are delivering it back."

For modern-day audiences, the tours and extravaganzas may make the original show, music, or characters even more meaningful, rather than less.

"These fan pilgrimages and big public events are a reaction to the isolation people feel when they consume media today," Rehak explains.

In the pre-cable, pre-DVR, and pre-streaming world, television was a social phenomenon. Everyone saw the same episode on Sunday night and there was shared talk around the water cooler. These events can be a way of restoring a little bit of that lost sense of simultaneity - a way to, once again, experience something together.

"Sure, a festival or a tour can corral audiences and generate money," Rehak says, "but people are getting something out of it. It is individual, social, and real."

Berger says that experiences are what actually make people happy in the long run. "And memories of an experience can stay perfect forever - they actually often get better over time rather than worse." Certainly, event planners and promoters are keen to this, and have made it their business to make memories. As the number and size of festivals have grown, so has the merchandise.

For fans of Phineas and Ferb, the July 11 launch of the Perry the Platy-bus tour would provide all that and more. Disney had turned a 27-foot-long Airstream trailer into a 4,000-pound Perry the Platypus. They hired a local dance troupe, wrote a new song for the event, and brought out show creators Dan Povenmire and Jeff "Swampy" Marsh, who also do the voice-overs for Dr. Doofenshmirtz and Major Monogram on the show. Dee Bradley Baker, who is the voice of Perry, was on hand and recalled his own summer fan quest waiting five hours in line for the premiere of The Empire Strikes Back. (There was no midnight showing.)

Fans came to Times Square by car, bus, subway, train, and on foot. They began lining up at 5:30 a.m. and were still cheering when the googly-eyed bus rolled out in midafternoon on its way to fandom's mecca, Comic-Con in San Diego, after which it would delight fans in Anaheim until late August, when summer's magic begins to fade.

Parents brought children in strollers and on shoulders. Teens came without parents. And parents came without teens, or any children for that matter. Even an officer from New York's Midtown South precinct wanted in on the experience.

"My wife and kids and I watched the Top 10 Countdown this summer and we were going crazy," he told one of the event wranglers, who gave him a Platy-bus tour T-shirt. Nothing says "I was there" like a concert T-shirt. (Except of course the cellphone photos taken while holding it up like a lighter.)

"For a fan, the objects become charged with a power of association with a beloved set of characters, a show, and even a particular period in one's life," says Rehak. With his college students, Rehak points to the billions of dollars spent on Harry Potter memorabilia.

"Yes, it's economics, but they shouldn't lose sight of the very real passion that drives it. . . . It all becomes real when you see the recognition of that same passion and magic in someone else's eyes, not just your own."

And to experience that requires you to inhabit the same physical space - be it a strip-mall Barnes & Noble at midnight, a dairy farm near Woodstock, the Sons of Ben section at the Union's PPL Park in Chester, or Times Square on a Monday morning.

And so, by taking my kids to New York, watching them shake hands with the man behind the Platypus gurgle, did we catch summer's proverbial firefly? Make a memory that might get better over time?

As the sun set over the Pennsylvania Turnpike, my youngest declared from the backseat, "Everything about today was good." Then he promptly fell asleep.