I went to my 25th and 30th and have no desire to go to another one. The loudmouths were still loudmouth braggers, the super-popular girls still acted like cheerleaders - hopping and bopping around, pretending that we were all good friends. There wasn’t anything to talk about. It was mostly - “Hi, how are you?” And then what - does anyone really want to hear about the last 25 or 30 years of someone else’s life? That’s a lot of ground to cover.
My 40th was 2 summers ago. I was not interested at all. My best childhood friend even came from out of town and tried begging me to go with her. Besides all of the above, I’d end up having to talk about my son’s cancer and death…over and over again. No thanks. Instead, my friend and I spent a different day together, by ourselves. Much nicer.
I went to my 40th, first and only. I’m glad I did it but won’t bother to repeat. I didn’t go to fulfill adolescent fantasies (sorry, but ya gotta admit, that’s what a lot of your post is about!), but to see a few folks that I’d never see otherwise. And I did that, but that was enough.
As others have noted, the folks I really wanted to keep in touch I have managed to anyway.
I graduated in the early Eighties and have been to, I think, just three of my high school reunions. I had a nice enough time at each but haven’t felt compelled to go every time, obviously. I’ve stayed in close touch all this time with five of my best buddies - a priest, a lawyer, a podiatrist, a psychologist and an entrepreneur (which sounds like the opening of a joke, I know). We get together every few years and always have a blast. That’s far more important to me than class reunions.
I wasn’t invited to my 10th reunion (and am unsure if we even had one), but I probably would have avoided going for the same reason. My life is totally pleasant, but I am embarrassed by how little I achieved compared to the “potential”. (I understand this is a me-issue, heh.) I haven’t kept up with anyone from my HS, so I doubt I’d be invited to any in the future. I made many more long-lasting friendships in college than in high school.
RIght before Covid hit, my mom attended her 50th reunion. She said she had an okay time, but it was mainly a glum affair where they talked about how many of them had died and/or were very unwell (seemed like more than average). But she seemed to enjoy talking about old memories, at least.
My father, like me, attended an all-boys Catholic high school in Green Bay (there were two such schools back then, and he attended the other one), and was in the class of '51. He’s been going to his reunions every five years, up through the 65-year reunion in 2016, though there are only a handful of surviving graduates left now. He’s always seemed to have a good time, though he is in touch with a lot of his former classmates anyway.
I’ll have to ask him about this year’s reunion, as I suspect that it was cancelled or postponed.
The only HS classmate I am in contact with works for my insurance agent. And I still live in the same county from where I graduated. I might have sociability issues. I haven’t attended any of the reunions.
Never been. They started having them at 10 years, and then every 5 years. I’m assuming they’ll have a 30th here in a couple years.
For the most part, it seems like the only people that go are 1) the people who never left town in the first place and 2) a few of the people who were really popular.
I was amazed that Jerry showed up at our 40th. He’d only gone to our school for Junior year, and I only knew him because we wrestled in the same weight class. He knew he was moving (again) at the end of the year, and I assumed he’d made a decision not to make friends just to lose them. And I never saw him with other kids…
…Until there he was! He walked in with his wife, and I was so surprised I yelled across the dance floor “Garrard!” He was glad he knew someone there, and I was proud to have remembered his real name. (Though maybe he hated it, he was still going by “Jerry”… )
And his wife seemed happy to be there. Huh. I’ve never talked my wife into going (she went once as a fiancée): “WHY would I want to watch you and your ‘whacky’ [air quotes] friends revert to your high school personalities?”
I recently had a woman send me a friend request on Facebook. Her name rang a bell, turns out we graduated in 1976 along with 81 others.
I mentioned to her that I’d run into a classmate a few years ago, we kept in touch, then he died. She then rattled off the names of four others who have died recently as well as two who died in the 80s.
I went to my five year but haven’t been to any others. They always schedule them at bad times.
Must viewing, an all-time fave of mine:
Coupla quotes:
It’s a festival of pain.
I’ll see you at the “I’ve-Peaked-and-I’m-Kidding-Myself” party.
Everybody’s coming back to take stock of their lives. You know what I say? Leave your livestock alone.
We have a Facebook group for our graduating class. People could keep in touch or connect in there if they wanted, but most don’t. They also keep track of which classmates have died.
I’m friends with people in Facebook that weren’t friends in high school. We knew each other by name but didn’t move in the same crowds. I’m able to see what goes on back home and they live vicariously through me, the city mouse.
I was from a small town, had limited resources. The world was smaller then, I think.
I can’t imagine going to a college reunion. With high school, there was a lot longer to get to know people. I had a wicked crush on Wanda in 3rd grade, for instance…and she graduated with me 9 years later. And if you were a “participater” you went deeper. You were in band, choir, sports, drama, things that were every year and involved you beyond the school day—that meant some deeper friendships were likely to develop.
But college was just a few years. I was becoming friends with some guys in my dorm one year and the next, I moved to a different dorm a block away and it was like we were on different planets.
Another reminder how different we all are. For me, high school was just 7 classes a day with random people. I knew some better than others, but I didn’t develop any real friendships. In contrast, at my small residential college, I was with the same group of people practically 24 hours a day, at a time when we were learning exciting things, on our own for the first time, experimenting with politics, along with sex, drugs and rock and roll. Compared with High School, my college friends were “like minded” on racial, social and political issues. It was an intense and unforgettable four years that changed my life. High School is a fuzzy and very distant memory.
Yeah, I had a good time as well at mine. I went to our 5th, 10th, and 20th. We are due for a 30th this year, but I’m not sure if that’s going to happen.
Mostly it was a lot of catching up with old friends and people I hadn’t seen in years.
I think it all depends on your high school experience. I generally got along with most people from all sorts of social groups in my class of around 200 or so. I played some sports and was involved in other stuff in high school.
If you found high school “traumatizing”, chances are you probably are not going to enjoy your reunion. IMHO, a reunion isn’t really a place to find some sort of “catharsis”, “validation” or “closure”.
I’ve never been to a college reunion. I’ve been back for our annual “Big Football Rivalry” game a bunch of times and attended various alumni events in the city. But never our formal reunions. Maybe because I don’t think of college as being part of a cohesive “class” in the same way I do for high school.
In our yearbooks, seniors listed their activities and which year(s) they participated. You might see
**
Doe, John: Spanish club 1,2; Football 1; School play 3,4; FFA 1,2,3,4; Homecoming court 3; Prom committee 3; Class treasurer 2; Yearbook staff 4; SAR recipient 4; Senior Bowl 4
and so on. I notice some students had entries that were a name, then completely blank. They apparently* hadn’t joined a single activity in the four years they attended. I imagine for them high school was pretty dry and dull. But I’m from a small town and school provided much-needed diversions for many young people.
*I knew a few people who simply chose not to list what they’d done, so it wasn’t 100% proof they’d avoided participation.
FFA=Future Farmers of America
SAR=Sons of the American Revolution
And others…
FHA=Future Homemakers of America
VICA=I forget, vocational things
We had similar notations in our yearbooks, and we similarly had some guys with no extracurriculars listed. From what I recall, they tended to be people who were one or more of the below:
not athletic (so, not in sports)
not in the “in group” (so, not involved in the social activities or class leadership)
not academically strong (so, not in things like National Honor Society)
had an after-school job (so, less time to spend on extracurriculars)
But, yeah, overall, I think that they were also the guys who were less engaged, overall, with high school, and with their classmates.
I don’t know if our yearbook did that or not. If they did, my entry would be pretty sparse. I was on the JV wrestling team for two years (mostly because it got me out of PE). Maybe something else I no longer remember. I didn’t hate high school. I had good teachers. I wasn’t bullied or anything. “Pretty dry and dull” sums it up nicely.
I recall thinking that the powers that be threw a REALLY wide net to try to include as many people as possible. They’d list office aides, for example, which were often awkward people that I think they took under their wing. And a lot were for participating in a contest rather than winning it. I think the rule for Spanish club was that you had to attend one meeting per semester.
Another thing, though, was that we had kids who rode the bus from the farms around us. A good friend of mine wanted to play baseball but his parents wouldn’t drive him the 5 miles each way for every practice, game, etc. That refusal began when he wanted to play Little League and continued through his high school years. The highway between his house and the school would not have been conducive to a bike or moped, and of course weather could complicate matters. It chapped him some, because they were willing to drive him if it was for band.
I’ve been to reunions for my high school, as I wrote above, and also for college and law school. I’ve kept in touch with several of my classmates from each but do like to go to reunions now and then. It can be fun, and I’ve never felt judged or uncomfortable. It also helps that I just live a non-onerous drive away from all three.
Heh. My mom likes to tell the story about the time, early in their marriage, when she dragged my dad along to her high school reunion. He was uncharacteristically terse and withdrawn in talking to her classmates, and when she later asked him why, he said, “Why should I bother getting to know these people? I’m probably never going to see them again.”
My high school had assemblies now and then for announcements, awards, presentations, etc. Just about every time it was announced, “The Enigma Society will not be meeting this week.” The same sentence would often appear on the weekly schedule, too. The Society had no officers, program, budget or events ever, but just the same, several people listed it in the yearbook as one of their activities.
