If someone set it up I’d probably feel compelled to go. I wouldn’t want to go because frankly what is there to talk about when so much time has passed. But it would probably be more awkward not going if everyone else shows up.
I went to my 10th back in 1985. Only about 50 out of a graduating class of 250 showed up. I was one of maybe 3 guys that showed up that was single or not in a committed relationship, about half the women were in the same boat. I spent most of the night talking to the single gals, all had been previously married and had one or in a couple cases, 2 divorces in their past. I got lucky that night with a gal that was just looking for a one night stand. Hooked up with another gal from the reunion a few months later but she was a hot mess looking for a sugar daddy.
I have talked to a couple people that are now trying to put together a 50th reunion for 2025. Not sure if I would want to attend. It will just be a bunch of old people sitting around talking about their aches and pains and show pictures of their grandkids.
I’ve been to three reunions. I went to a Catholic, all-boys high school in suburban Green Bay, and there were about 75 guys in my class. At all of the reunions, there were a fair number of women who were from our year, who attended the all-girls school a few miles away.
I should note that, of my classmates, there are essentially three groups:
- A third of them have essentially spent their entire lives in Green Bay, and still live there
- Another third still live in Wisconsin, within 90 minutes of Green Bay
- The final third, like myself, live at least a couple of hours away
Of the three I went to:
- The 5-year reunion was pretty low-key; it was held at a bar that was being managed by one of my classmates. I’d guess we had about 20 guys there. A big part of the reason why I wound up going was that it was held in between Christmas and New Year’s, and I happened to be back in Green Bay for the holidays.
- The 25-year reunion was a fairly big deal, as that’s sort of a significant milestone. A couple of my classmates organized it, and they rented out a party room at a local restaurant for it. We had a very good turn-out – at least half of the class showed up. I primarily went for the opportunity to see people whom I hadn’t seen in decades, and most of the people who I wanted to see were actually there. So, it was enjoyable.
- The 30-year reunion was substantially smaller than the 25. It wasn’t bad, but most of the people who were there were the “townies” (the first group, the lifelong GB residents), and there weren’t a lot of people there who I really wanted to see.
There was no 35-year reunion (which would have been in '18), and I have no idea if there’ll be a 40.
Also, I went with my then-fiancee (now wife) to her 10-year high school reunion. She went to a very large high school in suburban Chicago (there were about 1200 people in her class). She was very disappointed with it, mostly because she, too, was hoping to reconnect with old classmates with whom she had been friends, and none of them showed up. She hasn’t been back to a reunion since.
Our 50th would have been last year, but Covid put an end to that. Thanks to Facebook, I’ve reconnected with the handful of friends I had in high school, so I see no need to attend a physical gathering with a room full of strangers.
I attended three reunions early on and had a reasonably good time, but at the 20th, I had an odd encounter that baffles me to this day. Our class advisor attended, an English teacher who had been very kind and encouraging to me, a shy and somewhat socially awkward kid. I approached her to say hello. She looked me up and down and said “I don’t remember you.” Hoping to spark a memory, I mentioned a term paper I had written that she especially liked, and that I had successfully gone into the radio/TV profession. And then she said, “I don’t remember you AT ALL!,” and turned away. The encounter was less than a minute. I hardly thought she would remember a student she had 20 years before, but how difficult would it have been for her to fake it? It was upsetting, and I left right after that, vowing never to attend another reunion, and in all these years I have not.
I got a postcard a couple of years ago advertising my 30th reunion. It was organized by a professional outfit that had the time and resources to look for missing alumni because I hadn’t moved in 17 years and there had been at least one reunion in that time. It was scheduled for a Friday night in mid-October in Texas (it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why that doesn’t work), and I couldn’t travel for health and other reasons. Suffice it to say that the reunion wasn’t as successful as it was hoped.
We do have a fairly robust Facebook group and a plan to have a combined class reunion in the spring or summer in a few years. I also made contact with some people I wanted to make contact with, so it wasn’t a total loss.
Our 50th would have been this year, but we’re going to have a 50+1 next June. I’m on the organizing committee and I’m looking forward to it. I went to a small high school where everybody knew everybody else, and I think it will be interesting to catch up with my classmates. It will be extremely low-key with a minimal amount of organized activities. Mostly, just sitting around and bullshitting.
We’ve now lost about 15% of our original class, including several this year. This may very well be the last time I have a chance to see these people.
It’s been 58 years since graduation, and I’ve never had any interest in going to a reunion. Strangely, most of the kids I hung out with were a year younger. The only close friend I had from my own class passed away a few years ago. From a class of about 750, I really didn’t know many of them anyway.
I attended an uppity Catholic HS. If you weren’t into sports, you were not a person. I wasn’t into sports.
For some reason I went to my 5th year reunion, in 1991. Not sure why. It’s the only reunion I’ve attended.
My 35th was held this year. Had zero interest in attending.
Between Facebook, LinkedIn and Google, I can generally see where my old high school classmates ended up. No need to see them face to face.
Never.
My High school years were a Hell of bullying, violence & humiliation.
Hell is the only thing I wish for my “classmates”, with the exception of three.
I attended the 10th and the 40th.
High school had been a painful time in my life, just enough confidence and acceptance and hope to have given me a stake in fitting in socially, but not enough to pull it off. And it was populated with a lot of the same people I’d had to survive in junior high, when things were much worse.
So it was like going back to a scene of trauma, and frankly it was pleasant and healing and I enjoyed it. Unlike people who mostly go back hoping to reconnect with folks they had good times with back in the day, I went back to be eye to eye with people I’d painted within my head as monsters and villains, bullies and tormentors. Turns out they were just people who had been uncertain and easily threatened themselves. Some still were, and quite visibly nervous about me being there! I got into conversations that ranged from people apologizing to people forgiving or pronouncing me successfully changed, as well as those who said I totally hadn’t.
It helped put some memories into a more comfortable and less restless place.
At the 40th, I was hoping to be pitching my book, since a good number of the people there were in the book (albeit with names changed, etc) and would recognize places and events etc. But that publisher and I couldn’t work out our differences so the book didn’t come out for another three years.
I went to my 40th HS class reunion and was disappointed to learn all my former classmates were just a bunch of clowns. On top of that, I didn’t recognize anyone. Then, I looked at the banner and realized I was in the wrong room. This was the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College Reunion.
Actually, due to distance, I didn’t attend any school reunion, though I wish I had. I did make the website for our 30th HS reunion, however, so I got to catch up with a number of former classmates online.
My school was more rural and while not crazily small (we had around 1000 students, my graduating class was around 200), the county has lost a lot of population since then (not uncommon in that large swathe of the country), the old High School was long since closed and consolidated with other schools in the county. Part of having grown up in a county that mostly lost population steadily for many decades is even the typical “never leave their hometown” types, mostly…have left home, rural Appalachia has so few job prospects a great many people had no meaningful option to stay at home. Many didn’t make it that far, some locations like the Roanoke and Blacksburg VA areas have absorbed some of the types who in a more typical school would’ve “stayed at home.”
There isn’t really a great venue to hold a reunion where I grew up, so AFAIK they’ve all been held in Roanoke and been sparsely attended. I’m not against the idea of attending, but the first few passed and I was busy and unable to attend, and haven’t felt the need to seek out invitations to the subsequent ones as I fell off their invite list.
My school didn’t really have exclusive cliques, we had people of differing interests, but everyone kind of associated with everyone. I knew everyone in my graduating class by name, but maybe fewer than 10 were really good friends. Oddly most of that group of 10 are still all really good friends, so in a sense I’ve always kept in touch with the people from High School I cared about keeping in touch with.
My high school seems to have them every five years, but I never go. Before my encounter with a brain aneurysm I couldn’t afford to go, and after the aneurysm all memories of that period of time have been wiped. I can’t remember a single thing about the high school or the people I went to school with. I have seen lists of those attending and how they used to look back in the late 70’s, and not one name or picture is familiar to me.
I only went to my 20th. It was at one of the big hotels near Disneyland, so it was kinda like an office off-site event. But I did connect with a small circle of friends, and we chatted most of the night. We met up a few times afterwards, but we didn’t really have much in common so that petered out. Mostly, it was boring. I haven’t gone to another since.
Oh, and one guy who apparently really remembered me I had absolutely no memory of. Coincidentally, he had the same name as a longtime boyfriend of mine.
I went to my 10th and 20th high school reunions. They were reasonably fun. I have pretty good memories of high school so there were people I was happy to see.
I missed my 30th because my son was a young baby
Last year was our 40th. I had been planning to go but it was canceled because of the pandemic. Not sure if it will be rescheduled.
I went to most of mine. I had a great time catching up and seeing how my old classmates were doing.
Everyone remembered me, and I remembered just about everyone. We had a small class – 120 – and most of us had been together since kindergarten, so it was easy.
The last couple we chartered a boat and watched fireworks.
I was looking forward to my 50th, but it was cancelled due to Covid.
I went to my first reunion. Then we moved and if they tried to get in touch with me, it didn’t work. When the 50th was approaching in 2004, I tried to find out about it. The school’s alumni association had a few reunions listed, but not mine. I did eventually find out that it was a closed, invitation only affair. I inquired and actually did get an invitation, but discovered that if I attended with my wife, it would cost over $500, not counting travel. (But one son lived in Philly at the time, so it would have been a visit to him and a place to stay.) I said FTS and never tried another.
My DIL says there is only one reason to go to a HS reunion: to brag about how successful you have been.
I graduated from high school in 2003, so only the 10th anniversary has come and gone. A lot of people were staying in touch via Facebook (which wasn’t known to us when we graduated) and the desire to attend a reunion to see one another in person was a bit muted, I guess.
There was still a reunion in 2013, and I’d guess maybe 20-30 people showed up (graduating class was 180 students). I enjoyed attending. Everyone was nice to one another and despite being an introvert I found I had little difficulty making conversation. I was nervous about attending because I did very well academically in high school and was attending college on scholarship. By 2013 I was a college flunk-out who had found stable, if not meaningful, employment. I didn’t want people treating me like something had happened, but nobody did.
I went to a few, the last of which was my 50th. My class was very small and all of us were together in one building from Kindergarten through 12th grade so in may ways we developed sibling relationships. One thing I like is that regardless of any accomplishments we’ve made over the years we all knew each other when none of us had much of anything so no one bothers to put on airs. But most of all I’ve found that many of the people I’m most interested in today are people that I barely knew in school. I realize now what a wasted opportunity it was not to have gotten to know these people when we were classmates.