Did the tenth and the twentieth (though technically I did not graduate from that HS). 20th was a lot more fun. Barely recognized some people but was nice to catch up. That being said, with FB and what not there wasnt really a lot more I wanted to learn about these people. In fact, it got kind of dull with the same conversations again and again. I guess there is a reason I am not friends with most of these people irl. All that being said, it was fun to go to…and I banged pretty much every hot girl there over the preceeding 20 years (not bragging, just a fact) so that made it interesting.
That’s awesome! 
I didn’t start attending until the 25th and I’ve been to three since then. The cliques are still evident, but they aren’t really cliques – these people were friends in HS and they stayed in touch after. Nothing wrong with that. No one gets snubbed, everyone makes a point of chatting with everyone else, at least for a little while.
At one of the reunions, a classmate made CDs for everyone of songs that were popular in 1963. The cover art was our individual senior pictures. Pretty cool, I thought. At another reunion one of our favorite teachers was a guest. I was surprised that she wasn’t much older than we were. I always looked at teachers as old, even the young ones.
I went to my 5th - eh, it was fine. It was just like a high school dance only we could all drink legally.
I went to my 10th - it was a lot of fun. I had changed enough from the person I was in high school (quite, unassuming, plain looking) to be the one many of the guys were interested in. That was kind of cool. Of course I was married, so…too bad for them. 
We didn’t have a 15th, and I missed our 20th.
My 25th is next weekend. I’m going. It’s a casual family thing. We’re actually doing it with all three high schools in the area and several different years. Personally, I would rather it just be my class and my school, but I’m going anyway. There are enough people I would like to see and who have mentioned they would kill me if I don’t show, that I am definitely going.
That’s part of the reason we moved our celebration to end-of-year. Christmas and New Year’s would make many of us who lived outside the area go back, if at least to visit family. So we squeezed the celebration there. Not exactly the date I originally wanted, but it turned out to be the best idea. We celebrated the New Year a day early, and I mark it as the start of a pretty good year so far (2012).
My dad always goes to his, but it seems his year had less cliques (in the “we’re all really nerdy” way). His 50th is coming soon…
Oh, I guess part of the reason I liked it is because many of those who attended had really grown up. The only two I had characterized as bitches in HS, I had the chance to see briefly between a year (or 5) before. Yea, they still be bitches. Even though the people around them had given up bullying and matured, they still ignored me (rather bluntly). So they were not missed by many at the party.
Couldn’t afford my first one, and thought it was weird it wasn’t held in our high school or even our home town, and a lot of my friends weren’t in my graduating class. And my high school friend was pregnant and loathe to shell out for an open bar when she couldn’t drink. So we crashed the hotel, hung out in the lobby, and said hi to people as they came in and out.
And now with Facebook, I can keep tabs on everyone anyway.
The only reunion I ever heard about in advance was our 10th. I attended. It was held in an armory, complete with live band. I don’t know if the band was good or bad, because the acoustics sucked and all I heard were reverberations.
Out of a class of almost 850, fewer than 200 showed up. I stood there talking to one girl for a while, and when she stepped away, I had to ask who she was - turns out she and I had known each other since 1st grade, and 10 years after graduation, I didn’t recognize her!! :eek: The few people I was most interested in seeing didn’t even show up.
One of my better friends showed up with her husband, sorta. He walked in, looked around, turned around and left. At least he had the decency to leave the car, and he walked home. My friend and I hung out, and not too long after the reunion, she dumped his sorry ass. But all in all, it wasn’t a very pleasant time.
I guess I should mention that the year after graduation, I joined the Navy and during the subsequent years, I’d lived in several places quite different from the white-bread suburb where I spent my formative years. Many of my classmates, on the other hand, stayed put. Some are still in the same neighborhood they were all those years ago.
This year would have been my 40th, and I now live close enough that I could have gone, but there was nothing planned and as I think about it, there really aren’t too many people that I’d care about seeing anyway. I occasionally email to a couple of old friends, and I know a few have died, but they were a part of my life that just didn’t mean all that much to me - high school was just a brief phase that I had to endure. Just not that big a deal.
I went to our 10th which was pretty good. It was actually really convenient; the place was two blocks from my house and my wife wasn’t bored since we are high school sweethearts. I liked showing off the fact that I (a band and theatre geek) married one of the popular girls. 
Not as many people as we hoped were there. The guy from our class who has a Super Bowl ring had the nerve to think summer training was more important! The cliques were pretty much gone and almost everyone chatted. There were a few people who just sat at their table, but I recognized them as people who had been quiet “loners” in school. One guy who was also a theatre geek was living in NYC and did voice-overs for late night TV ads. Another person who had been a real jerk to everyone was also living in our hometown and work as a stocker at Kroger. (Thank you, karma). Our prom king and queen were married and had a kid.
Over all it was fun.
I just went to my 25-year this past summer. We had a small class to begin with – and the two high schools in our school district combined into one just a few years after I was graduated – but a shockingly low number attended. Out of 233 graduates, ten people were at the reunion. TEN. :: facepalm :: I felt badly for the organizers who had clearly busted their tails to pull it all together. There was about 3 times that at the meet-and-greet in the pub the night before. We assumed the low turnout at the actual reunion was because* of the big-ticket, pricey admission: $20. (Hey, they’ve gotta pay for the food! We didn’t even have booze!) Or it was because the reunion was held at the high school (which was a new building that none of us had ever attended and felt no connection to), so there was no booze.
Interesting dynamic though. There weren’t enough people there to fall into the old cliques. We were practically forced to mingle. I ended up making new friends with the people there whom I didn’t know at all when we were in school. They were on the vocational track and I was on the college track and we never had classes together. So I got to know several people that I hadn’t really met before, even though I had technically known them for 25 years. Only one of my clique was there and everyone else was someone I didn’t know all that well. My clique friend and I split up and conquered the room and she reported the same thing: It might have been more fun because we didn’t really know everyone there. There weren’t preconceived notions about who the people were because I didn’t know most of 'em from Adam. Once they told me their names, I’d sort of vaguely recall hearing it before, or had spotted them in the yearbook, but otherwise they were for the most part total strangers to me.
And now they’re my friends!
- Another theory: Our hometown is clearly dying and looked like a war had been fought there but no budget for reconstruction (not at all unlike Flint, MI). It’s a midwestern, rust-belt town and the last major factory closed its doors a few years ago, so there really aren’t many good jobs there, especially if you’re college-educated. My guess is 95% of the class lives at least an hour away in a major city (where there are jobs) and I’d bet at least 60% of us don’t even live in the state anymore. Half of the attendees at the reunion came in from out of state – and three of us are living in Florida.
The most amusing thing to me:
There was this girl in my class who was in National Honor Society and all the college prep classes. She got pregnant our senior year – and actually missed our prom because she was giving birth at the time. Anyway, there was a ton of controversy: Not only did the school administrators not want to let her graduate, but they didn’t even want her to participate in the National Honor Society induction.
The NHS advisor sat me and a few other NHS members down and explained to us that the admins thought our classmate was setting a terrible example and how would we feel if she was not included in the induction ceremony? We all looked at each other, outraged. It was just pure dumb luck that she’d gotten pregnant – it could have been any one of us. I was pissed. I didn’t see what her pregnancy had to do with the academic achievement of NHS. So I threw it down. I told the adviser if our classmate was left out of the induction ceremony, that I wouldn’t be attending AND I’d turn in my membership in protest and the admins could go suck it. Most of the other NHS members there joined me in solidarity and we basically said “Include her or we ain’t marchin’ and you won’t even *have *a NHS.” She was included and I made a point to be the one to go pull her out of the audience to bring her up on stage for her induction. She had no idea all this went down. I saw her at the reunion (her kid has already graduated from college!) and told her the story. I think she was pleased that a classmate basically went to bat for her, for no reason. I had no vested interest if she got into NHS or not, but I guess I empathized and thought it was bullshit. She did all the same hard work we did to get in and she earned the grades and deserved the induction. I wasn’t having any part of excluding her because of some moral judgment. She told me that they weren’t going to let her graduate, but it became a moot point because on graduation day, she had a 5-day old infant and wasn’t up for marching for the stupid diploma.
The irony of all that now: Our new high school actually has* on-site daycare* now. For the NHS members (and all other students) who have babies. :smack: We all had a good laugh over that one. “Times have changed,” she said. They sure have.
It (20th) was strange-just about the only people who showed were the jock and cheerleader types-the nerds and brains were all MIA. I kind of existed in between both worlds, not quite part of either (since I was a jock of sorts who also had a brain), but after the picnic on the first day I didn’t bother making the dinner the following night since I shared absolutely nothing in common with these people. Frankly I got along better with the people in the next class above me.
I’ve been to most of mine. As a nerd and not a jock, most of my closer acquaintances were other nerds. Since I went to school in a small town, most of us had gone thru school with the same class since 5th grade, and many of us since first grade. So we all knew each other for a long time. While none of them have been spectacular, each time has been enjoyable.
I went to my 10th and 20th and enjoyed them both. I wasn’t a member of the “in” crowd, but I had my friends and some of them showed up both times. I was glad to see them.
I would have gone to my 30th but the timing was bad.
I haven’t been to any of them and I missed my graduation too.
I had enough credits to graduate in January so I hadn’t been to the school in months and when they were getting diplomas I was sobbing into my pillow at basic training. Hey, it was the first weekend, I was lonely and so so scared. I was the first member of my grandmothers family to move more than 15 kms away from her house and I went for broke with 1800kms.
I went to my 10th and it was really great! Everyone got along and was very happy to see each other. No real split along any sort of jock/nerd lines. They had it at a local bar/restaurant.
Our class was like 255 and I’d say 50+ showed up. Can’t wait for the 20th!
here’s what I discovered:
10th year reunion = Fun.
Interesting, to see people who you remember-- some fairly well, others only vaguely.
Conversations are personal, but superficial. After the 50th “how are you, are you married, where do you work, oh, that’s nice”— it gets tedious; but it’s interesting to see how people turned out, some people surprise you by how much they have changed, and you see a couple of familiar faces with whom you actually have something interesting to share. Of the people who show up, almost all are the “successful” types, but there are one or two of the burned-out dropouts --still wearing sandals and working (barely)as bartenders or musicians.
20th year reunion =Less Fun.
Only the “successful” types are in attendance. Conversations are even more superficial. Many people wearing suits ,and want to discuss the stock market, or their business ventures.
30th year reunion.
I say to myself “why bother?”. But I read the invitation carefully before tossing it into the trash can.
I went to my 10th. I felt the cliques had dissolved and truly enjoyed the event, but some of my old friends felt the social pecking order was as bad as ever. On the other hand, they went in feeling reserved and ready to be disappointed. They clustered together waiting to be greeted by the popular kids, certain that they wouldn’t. They didn’t look like a very welcoming bunch and if we hadn’t been close in high school I wouldn’t have approached them either. I definitely think it helps to meet half-way.
The absolute best part of my 10th grade reunion is that one of the nerdiest, most awkward, least attractive kids from my class had really grown into his looks. Lost the braces, outgrew the acne, ditched the glasses, improved his posture & found a haircut that managed his wire-brush hair. He had been a real strange duck in high school, the kind of quiet, nerdy kid you’d have totally ignored and never noticed if he wasn’t so disastrously easy for the popular kids to make fun of. He had gotten an engineering degree, had a great job, and married a very sweet, attractive, outgoing woman. His story was like a cliche from a movie, and it was just so great to see, and most people seemed really tickled by his success. Seeing his transformation would have been worth the trip all by itself.
I got an invitation to my 10th, looked at it for about a minute, and chucked it into the trash.
My class had a 5th (:eek:) a 10th, and a 20th, at which I met a girl I’d known since 7th grade and was swept off my feet. She was a widow with 2 young boys and I thought “this will be perfect!”.
We married a year later, organized our class’s 25 year reunion then got divorced. Oh well.
I went to our 30th and had a great time. She didn’t show.
Funny thing, her identical twin sister is still one of my best friends. Her kids (in college now) still call me “Uncle Brian”.
I love reunions.
I hadn’t thought about it until reading this thread, but my 20th would be this year. I haven’t heard anything about a reunion, but it might be because of what happened just prior to our 10th.
I left town to go to university straight out of high school, then left the country to attend graduate school. By the time our 10th reunion rolled around, I’d already moved to yet another country for work, and had even moved cities within this country several times. The single person from my graduating class with whom I was still in touch (this being pre-Facebook) told me that the organizing committee wanted to invite me to the reunion, but couldn’t track down my current contact details. Being a bit of a practical joker and knowing that high school wasn’t a terribly enjoyable part of my life, he claimed no knowledge of my whereabouts.
Finally, one of the girls hit on the idea of ringing up my parents, since they still live at the same address I had during high school. My father, who is also a practical joker and knows how much I hated high school, responded thusly: “Mengvs? Oh, Mengvs. I haven’t seen her in ages. She went out for milk one day and just never came back. This is going back oh, about ten years now. …Hello?”
Fiestas rather than Thanksgiving, but same here. Miss Popular tried to get a 10-year reunion organized but gave up after getting “sorry no” from the people who were still in town (many of those of us who weren’t hadn’t even received the letter).
Just erased a Pit-worthy post. Nope. Wouldn’t go if you paid me.