I went to my 10th, 20th, and 35th reunions.
I don’t think I will go to any more. I don’t have anything in common with any of them - they just want to complain about their ailments. And my wife has already found out how much weight my old girlfriends have gained.
I am still in contact with some of my friends from high school, but I seem to have gone to school with a lot of old people.
FWIW there were 401 in my graduating class, and a lot of them are dead.
Regards,
Shodan
The Mrs. and I were both in the same class with 500 other students. She’s the only one I keep in touch with from HS and vice versa. Yet we’ve been to the 20th, 37th, and 40th reunions (no, I don’t know why we had a 37th reunion). I imagine we’ll attempt to make the 50th. It’s amusing to encounter those other folks from the days of our youth.
I suspect I’d more eagerly anticipate a “reunion” of the respondents to this thread, than my HS class! 
Additional data point - I basically HATE large parties, and am horrible at small talk. I generally would rather stay home and read than go to a party where I am expected to make superficial conversation with folk I expect to see rarely, if ever again. Maybe that is a sign of arrogance - or insecurity. But that is pushing me towards not attending.
(Curiously, I never used to have that problem when I drank! ;))
Was thinking about pulling out my old yearbooks to see if I could put pictures/signatures with any of the names of folk on the reunion site - but didn’t even go through that effort. So that doesn’t bode well for me wanting to try to do that in person.
Earlier this year a guy called me about an upcoming grade school reunion - but I was busy on that weekend. Curiously, I found myself more interested in that than HS, as my grade school class was only 30-40 or so, and was made up of kids from my immediate NW side of Chicago neighborhood. As opposed to my HS which was huge, and drew students from the entire N side of Chicago.
Funny, but I feel as though I have more clear and detailed recollections from grade school than from HS. (And no, I can’t blame the substances. They didn’t really start rolling until college. :smack:)
Why?
No. I didn’t have a hellish high school experience but it wasn’t anything I look back on with nostalgia or fondness either. It pretty much just filled time between adolescence and adulthood.
Oh, I loved my HS reunions.
They were pleasant BECAUSE all the people who had a chip on their shoulder about HS or just don’t like events like reunions stayed home. I had a large HS class as well — 950 in my graduating class - and about 100 or so showed up to the reunion. (I’m not counting spouses and dates)
There weren’t a lot of people I even remembered. But you pretended you remembered the people you didn’t and if you actually ran into someone that you did remember, it was like they were your long lost best friend. So it was a pleasant evening visiting with a lot of interesting and sociable people who really wanted to be there.
I just went to my 20th this summer. It was also 20 mins from my home.
It was fine. There was one friend I was excited to see who I hadn’t since a wedding a decade ago. I had a nice time talking with her and her boyfriend for a while.
Everyone else there I had meaningful/interesting/non-taxing interactions with was, for the most part, someone I’m already in semi-regular communication with anyway.
I learned how different we all have become (or always were but just didn’t know it?).
I’m glad I went, but I would not have gone/go again if travel was involved.
The last reunion I went to before my 20th was the 5 year. That was actually more interesting and fun socially, as we all still had a lot of life in common. Now we’re 20 years out from any kind of shared experiences, and a lot of us just don’t overlap in any meaningful way anymore.
I have not. I’m an introvert and prefer an evening alone to an evening with people I haven’t seen in many years. I don’t hate my high school classmates and I guess high school was OK as such things go. When I’m back home and encounter them, they are generally pleasant people and we can have a conversation. I just don’t think that I would enjoy a big crowd of people gushing about their kids and jobs and that one time when Bob was petulant to random teacher. I suppose that if I were asked specifically by a someone to go to keep them company I would consider it, but for just a random invitation, I think I’m good.
No. I exerted myself to graduate at age 15, entirely to leave it (and my parents, town, state) behind, and I have never felt the slightest interest in anyone or anything about it beyond wishing that a few people got their just deserts (I imagined something in the nature of being castrated with a dull axe).
High school is the closest thing to a living nightmare I have experienced. Nightmare in the sense of never being able to find out what the rules were, events and people both seemed random and insane, people were cruel for no reason I could figure out. There were two options, mysterious humiliation and hiding.
Ugh. No.
I didn’t go for extracurricular activities, so for the large majority of the people I went to school with, the reminiscing would be “hey, remember when we would spend part of every day quietly sitting in the same rooom?” or “remember when we used to walk in hallways the same time?” Sprinkled amongst those were a few friends and a few worthless mouth-breathing redneck hick bullies that went out of their way to make my day a bad one, but most of the people I went to school with were pretty much random background characters.
Not terrible. Just not interested. I’m still in contact with friends from back then. Heck, for the last 30+ years we’ve been camping with people I knew in high school every Thanksgiving. But my graduating class was over 1000 people. No way to know everybody, and the social butterflies that go to reunions were the most annoying ones.
I did go to my 10th just to see who had gotten fat and/or pregnant. After that I lost what little interest I had in them.
Went to my 5th and 10th. This year will be my school’s 15th. We had a small class size - around 130 or so. Everyone pretty much knew everybody, and for the most part we all got along. Our class wasn’t TOOOO cliquey.
Since this is the 15th, it’ll be the one with all the spouses and kids and shit.
I did not hate high school, but the things I liked about it were entirely transitory and had virtually nothing to do with other students. If I could somehow have a reunion with some of my favorite teachers, I would go.
Someone tried organizing a 25th Reunion party for my high school class this year but it never materialized. Apparently most of the people who want to stay in contact with each other are friends on FaceBook so there really wasn’t much initiative to organize a party. Apparently FaceBook has really undid the need for reunion parties for anyone under the age of 40.
I attended my 10th, hoping to see some people again with whom I had been friendly. Not a single one showed up; the only other attendees seemed to be a certain social set that was still friendly with each other after 10 years. I was sweetly and politely ignored.
I attended my 40th also; I had recently lost a lot of weight and was feeling good about myself. Still, it was the case that almost none of the people that I was hoping to see showed up; one person that I remember being friendly with in high school could only brag about graduating from Stanford and whatever the hell he’s been doing since then.
Didn’t go to the 50th, based on previous experience. Plus I had put on a bunch of that weight again.
Nope – most of the people I’d want to see I already talk to, so it’d be kind of pointless.
Nope. Wasn’t a popular kid, pretty withdrawn, in fact. Being withdrawn got me plenty of negative attention (presumably because I was more inclined to flee than to confront), and the lack of intervention from other students or the school administration taught me even the non-aggressors didn’t give a shit about kids like me. I’m sure people have grown up since then, and maybe some people even feel bad about how they were when they were kids. Nevertheless, I never bonded with more than a handful of kids in high school. One I divorced and still see every month, a couple I hang with on Facebook, and the school is now 1200 miles away from me. I have nothing to go back there for.
I only went to my 20th so far, but I encourage those even who weren’t popular to consider it. To be honest I only went because I happened to be in town but it may be a good thing.
While not universal I did discover the following.
My experience may not reflect yours but I found it an amusing event.
My avoidance has less to do with the notion that people were cruel to me (that had mostly tapered off by high school) but because I don’t know any of those people. Even while I attended I probably knew maybe three people in my grade by name. Now I wouldn’t know any of them (except one, who would be awkward to meet, though I don’t believe she attends reunions either).
Which is not to say that none of them would know me - I apparently am very memorable, and for several years after high school people would randomly come up and expect me to know them. That tapered off eventually, though. Which is good, because it was always awkward. I don’t see why I’d want to go somewhere where that would actually be likely.
Frankly I’d rather go to somebody else’s class reunion where nobody knows me than my own reunion. And I’d rather stay home than go to either - I don’t much like crowds, particularly crowds of strangers with whom I have nothing in common, which is exactly what we’re talking about here.
Class reunions? No. I did not have a good time at school. I was heavily bullied and the teachers didn’t really care and I became a loner from an early age. My parents could have moved me to a different school but did not. My secondary school was little different.
I now live too far away to visit the secondary school - my primary school is no more - but there was a secondary school reunion reasonably nearby a few years back and I did attend that. All I can say about it is that the food was decent.