I have never attended any high school or college reunions.
But this past week I have been getting blasted on Messenger about my 50th class reunion.
I’ve kept in touch with a couple people from that era and they are going to attend. One is flying into PA from Denver and I really would love to see him so I am thinking about making an appearance.
But then - it was suggested by several people I don’t even remember that I do a stand up comedy routine for the event.
I was voted Most Humorous in my graduating class.
For those who don’t know it was simply a separate set of pictures of students who were voted into varying categories chosen by the yearbook producers at the time.
I guess I must have been a notorious clown even all those years ago.
I replied that I would give it some thought but did not commit.
The Mrs and I will have our 50th this year too. We met in high school, started dating at age 15, and she’s the only person from our HS I am still in touch with (and it’s still fun to keep in touch with her!). But we too marvel over how time has passed us so quickly. We’ll go to the reunion and see what’s up with everybody.
Hmm. Our 50th anniversary reunion had no “organized” activities at all except for everyone standing still long enough to take the group photo and the obligatory In Memoriam of those who had died.
The best thing about class reunions, particularly after about 20 years, is that the old cliques finally start to break down and the jocks and nerds can have a beer together, at least for one night.
My high school 50th reunion was at a snazzy hotel in Laughlin, Nevada. We paid an arm and a leg for a two room suite. There were TVs everywhere!
The dinner was horrendously expensive. Food was good, but one of the best dishes was a mushroom ravioli that had a sauce suspiciously like Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. No sreak. No lobster. Not even a shrimp.
I enjoyed seeing folks I remembered. We left before the booze started flowing while they cranked the music up to rattle the roof level.
I made sure I collected all the sundries in the suite’s bathroom to give to my granddaughters. They got a buzz out of the teensy bottles of shampoo and cream rinse.
The best part was leaving with the most handsome guy in the room: Mr VOW.
I went to my 40th high school reunion a little over a year ago – there were only 75 of us in the class, and between several people having passed away, and others just dropping out of sight, we only had about 40 at the reunion. It was hosted at the house of one of my classmates, and it was very informal, but it was good to see people, some of whom I hadn’t seen in decades.
My high school was rigorously siloed into social groups. The hardcore “in” clique ran all the highly visible student functions like yearbook and government, and of course they continued into reunion planning after graduation. For the first couple of rounds, they focused on themselves and gave only cursory attention to the less favored cliques, and then even that minimal effort fell away. I wasn’t even contacted for anything after the tenth and as far as I can tell nobody’s bothered to make even the slightest attempt to keep track of me or those like me. It’s fine, the place was a cesspool and those people were popularity-obsessed jackwagons, so I wouldn’t have attended anyway. But it’s interesting how aggressively they closed ranks and continued maintaining the original social edifice in the years following. And to whatever extent they may possibly regret their self-absorption and want to remedy their ways, it’s too late to collect the threads they allowed to drop.
But I do hope you enjoy your apparently more pleasant reunion!
I recently had an invite for my 45th. I only went to that HS for my senior year and didn’t recognize the name of the person sending the invite so declined. Plus it would require 14 hours of flying time with 8 hours of layovers.
I once accompanied a woman I was seriously dating to her 20-year reunion. They had a program for the evening, including slide shows, “catching up” speeches by different alumnae, little contests like the person who traveled the furthest to attend, things like that.
It showed me how badly my own 20-year reunion sucked. It was nothing but a dinner in a fancy catering hall, with music so loud nobody could hear each other talk (which was kinda the main point of a reunion).
So I’m conflicted about whether to attend the 50th, which would be sometime this year. I’ve largely failed to keep in touch with anyone and would love a chance to reconnect. But if it’s organized by the same people, I fear it would be a repeat of the genuinely miserable 10th.
My 50th was last year and I didn’t go. The decision was based on personality, curiosity, and reflections on my high school experience. I don’t enjoy superficial conversations, so the idea of engaging in such conversations over a couple of hours with people who are essentially strangers I am unlikely to ever to see again fills me with dread.
I have very little curiosity about “how ol’ Kimmer is doing.” I keep in touch with two people from high school, through email and snail mail and very occasional visits (each lives far away), and that’s it. We never talk about high school days.
My reflection on my high school experience is “it was fine, but things really got interesting after that,” so I don’t have a sense of wanting to reminisce. So I ignored the invitations to the reunion.
I feel like this may be much more an American phenomenon than a Canadian one. My mom went to high school in New Jersey and I remember her going to her 20th, 30th and 40th reunions. (side note, as she graduated in America in the early sixties, flipping through the “where are they now” section of the program was a bit unsettling with a few dozen “Unfortunately, Tommy Jerseyite was killed in Vietnam in 1967…” entries.)
The first one for my graduating class was a couple of years ago; it should have been in 2021 but I’m pretty sure it got delayed because of COVID until 2023. I didn’t go, and it’s all on me. Yeah, I didn’t need to see the in-crowd continue to pat themselves on the back, but truth be told, I feel like I was a total shit until my mid-twenties. Self-realization is an ugly thing. I wasn’t a bully or anything, rather I think I had an attitude about being short and horribly pimply and a year younger than my classmates (undiagnosed ASD didn’t help), and I had a lot of insulting bluster going on. I’m probably overstating the case: I do have friends from that era, and none of them make me feel like I should be a pariah. But I was literally quaking with fear after getting the invite that a bunch of other classmates were going to say “Hey, remember the time that you…?” and I declined.
I loved the two reunions I went to. But, going by what people post here, I was in a very unusual high school.
After school, but not too many years, I ran into two former classmates. They wanted to ask me about being a psychic. Like, not a spiritualist, not a store front medium, but a real “gifted” ESPer. I have no idea where they got that idea!
I hope your comedy skills were better than my psychic “powers”!
Urban high school with gangs. Graduating class of maybe 700. I’d be surprised if I knew 60 of them. I was part of the group of 30 Honors students who I knew well but wasn’t on a sports team or club or any extracurricular aside from the stupid honor society thing that all of the honor students did to put on our college applications. I don’t have animosity towards anyone and I wasn’t bullied but I was miserable in those years and see no reason to revisit them even though I could drive there in a couple hours. I’m in close touch with three of them and loose touch with a few more. There’s a small few it might be nice to see but I doubt they’d go either. Meh. No point.
Class of 1971 in a small high school. My class size was 62, second-largest ever for the school. We had our 50th reunion a year late because of the pandemic. There were 52 of us still alive, and 36 of those 52 attended one or both days of the reunion. I had an absolute blast catching up with people, a few of which I hadn’t seen since graduation.
Our 40th [2020] apparently got canceled (and never rescheduled) thanks to COVID. I went to the first day of the 20th, but not a single one of the brains were there, just the jocks and cheerleaders, presumably because of your theory above. I kind of existed between both of those worlds but was never close to anyone else in any event. While blowing their minds with my youthful and slim appearance in 6 years might be mildly tempting, I doubt I’ll make any effort to go to the 50th.
I went to my high school reunion last. I haven’t always made it, because I live out of state. It was a small graduating class (about seventy) and we elected our senior-year president on the platform of “I will always keep in touch and hold class reunions”. She’s done that.
Comparing to the other classes at school at the same time, she’s made all the difference, since none of them have regular reunions. Our reunions are super casual. Hang out at the Friday-night football game, then hang out at a bar or restaurant. And then on Saturday some sort of cookout at someone’s house. Only rule is the standard for polite company: no talk of religion or politics. So we talk about spouses, parents, kids, jobs, schools, etc while eating good food and drinking beers. There’s worse ways to spend a weekend.
I’ve never been to one, but I joined the FB group for our 40th reunion a couple of years ago so I could see what was up with the folks I went to school with. It was a class of over 900, so it definitely had cliques and social nexuses (mostly the band and AP kids).
Anyway, it turns out they were uninteresting to me, and mostly hard right politically, and it was (as someone said upthread) mostly the same people doing social things…the reunion seemed to be a lot of drinking and loud music.
I mostly played D&D & got high in high school, socially speaking…now that would be reunion.
Two years ago for me and ditto. I didn’t like those people when I was there, why in the world would I want to see them now? Those I liked I’m still in touch with - in fact I spoke with my high school girlfriend last night. Everybody else? Fuck 'em!
Story I’ve told here before:
Summary
I did go to the 10 year reunion just to see who had gotten fat, bald and/or pregnant. Standing in a random group, I said “It just isn’t fair. I wanted to see the mighty brough down, but there is LW - still svelte, still gorgeous, still popular…” Somebody behind me leaned in and said “Yeah, she’s still a bitch, too!”
