High School Reunions?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Has anyone been to a reunion? Did you have a good time? Was it what you expected it to be… or better or worse? LOL

After being in a different school each year for 5 years, I was fortunate to be able to spend my HS years in one school. LOL maybe that wasn’t fortunate, but at least my HS years were stable in that aspect! (my dad was a minister, then spent a year teaching; fourth grade was in one school, fifth in another, sixth in yet another; seventh was the move to Jr. High, known now as middle school; eigth was a move from the city to the suburbs so a different school; ninth we moved to a small town. So five, really six different schools in six years!). After I graduated and started college, however, my family moved from that town, and I really only went back once or twice, during my freshman year in college, to visit a friend who was then a senior in HS. So, I pretty much lost touch with my HS and my friends from HS. :frowning:

I tried several times over the years to get in contact with the school, writing them but never receiving any answer; I wanted only to be put in touch with the alumni association. LOL There used to be a good alumni association, but I think it kind of fell apart in the 80s, and it wasn’t until about the mid-80s that I started trying to get in touch with them, unfortunately. The advent of the internet, fortunately, brought the alumni association online! Finally I was able to get in touch and give them my address, etc., so last year I got an invitation to the 30th reunion!

Remember, I hadn’t seen many of these folks in 30 years or more, but I went to the reunion. And I had a great time! LOL Yes, the old “cliques” still existed, but I talked with many folks I did not even hang with in HS and really enjoyed myself. I will say this: the woman seem to have aged more gracefully than the men. :slight_smile: Our head cheerleader and homecoming queen looked better than she did in HS, if that was possible. :wink: Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see many of the friends that I had wanted to see the most; they were unable to make it to the reunion, and even more unfortunately, we had lost several members of the class. :frowning: Now I hope to make as many of the reunions as I can. They had been holding them every ten years, but I’m hoping they’ll move to every five years now. :slight_smile:

Any other reunion stories out there? Please share! :slight_smile:

tarragon

2

I am on the planning committee for our 30th high school (Denver, Colorado)August’02 reunion. This is kind of an interesting experience because I was a non-joiner shy hippie-type during my high school years. (and now I have finally joined a committee–to plan a party!)
I have already been to the 10th reunion (fun) and the 20th (kinda depressing, some deaths and divorces, people were sort of distracted, self-absorbed, still struggling to form lives and careers.)
The one good thing about our class that has not changed is our diversity, as well as the fact that we never really had a ‘jocks/cheerleaders rule’ attitude pervading our school. It sounds corny, but our diversity was our strength, and still is.
I think this 30th reunion will swing back to the good feeling we had for the 10th. People now really know/accept who they are, there is less road in front of the horse than there is behind the cart. We are parents and grandparents now.
Word is spreading fast,the internet helps and I have not received one refusal for our reunion. Some of the RSVPs have come from as far away as Alaska, as well as Italy.

3

I went to my 10th this past summer. It was fun, not the best time I’ve ever had, but not the worst either. It was an evening of average quality. Once you finish talking about (i) how different everyone looks and (ii) what people are doing now, the conversations become a little more difficult to keep going – it becomes standard cocktail party chatter.

4

I went to my 10th back in '93. It was a waste of time and money for me. I was always on the outside in H.S., and hadn’t maintained contact with anyone who attended. The same cliques were in place. I ended up talking with some of the other “outsiders,” though.

I have no idea if there will be a 20th. I’m not sure if they’d be able to get in touch with me or not, but I might go. I think I look better now than I did 10 years ago, and I’d kind of like all the popular guys who ignored me in H.S. to realize how stoooooopid they’d been. :wink:

5

I was invited to both my 15th and 20th highschool reunions. I find the concept that anyone would think that I would actually want to spend any time with any of these people laughable. But I did have a nice vision of giving Janine Garrofolo’s one line speeck from Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion: “F— every one of you for making high school four years of living hell.” ‘The Pleasure of your company is requested’–I find the concept that I would enjoy their company or they mine laughable.

6

Parkville High School class of '72 was pretty much a bust. We were a class of 849. We had a 9.5 year reunion (no kidding) and including spouses, maybe 200 showed up. It was held in a Natl Guard armory - great acoustics for the gawd-awful rock band. (My ears may still be ringing.)

I was singularly unimpressed. The few folks I wanted to see didn’t show. I left early. I don’t think there were any other reunions. I’ve heard no word of a 30th, nor would I attend if it was held. There’s not a lot about those years I want to remember anyway.

7

I just went to my 30th - it was a two night affair; a tailgate party at the big game with the perennial rival followed the next night by a sitdown catered dinner in the school’s new fine arts center. It was quite fun.

I did my 5th, 10th and both 20th reunions as well (I did one year at a large public high school and did not really enoy that reunion as much, but it was OK). I was not an unpopular loner type, but I ran with the “bad” crowd, so I wasn’t really friendly with what we called the “jets” (short for jetsetter - student government, team quarterback, cheerleaders, etc.). All that crap had melted away, for the most part, by the fifth and was gone entirely by the tenth.

And I’m quite glad to have renewed some acquaintance.

8

I just went to my 10th about a month ago.

We had a class of 380, and about 40 people showed up. Really. And most of those “crashed” the party later and were hanging out in the hotel bar. So when I walked in the door, I literally saw 10 people. Including the 2 people from the reunion company that were there to check us all in.

Apparently lots of people were talking about the reunion on Classmates.com, so I probably could have figured it out ahead of time.

It was $80 a head, and if I’d known so few people were going to show up ahead of time, I’d probably have stayed home. I did have a good time, since it was fun to see the few people there I knew. But it was awfully disappointing.

I will think long and hard when the 20th rolls around.

–scout (who is really disappointed all the bitchy girls didn’t show up so I could see they were fat, ugly old hags!!!) =)

9

My 10 year isn’t until 2003 but I’m planning on attending. We’re planning on having a baby in (hopefully) May or July that year so I’m going to have to go to my 10 year reunion either pregnant or 1-2 months postpartum… not really looking forward to that aspect of it but hopefully it will be fun. I’ve kept in contact with most of my “close” friends for the past 8 years but there’s a few that I’ve lost contact with and would love to see again. I had a class of 350+ but I doubt if most of them come and I’m sure the same cliques will be in place but I was friends with all different kinds of people in all different kinds of cliques so that won’t bother me. I wish you didn’t have to have a membership to planetalumni.com or classmates.com because there’s quite a few people I’d like to contact but don’t want to pay for it!

10

My 10 yr reunion was pretty cool. Most people were surprised that I turned out to be an MBA corporate guy in NYC instead of a stand up comic or something (remember that alternate-universe episode of Friends where we see what would have happened if Chandler was a comic writer instead of the office comedian?).

HS reunions are pretty fun if you were at least friendly with a lot of people in your class. If you went through HS as an angry isolated loner, the reunion will probably not be that fun for you. That is, unless you developed into a Brad Pitt/Jenifer Aniston or you became a bajillionare or something.

11

Based entirely on our experience (my wife and I started dating in high school) the whole thing shakes out like this:

Tenth reunion—we missed it. We were overseas with the service. The report was that the old clicks we still in place and the class officer and cheer leader types were still running the show. Some few old romances are fired up, at least for the evening and maybe the next morning.

Twentieth—a lot of pretensions had disappeared. Some of the stars had crashed and burned and some of the losers had made something of them selves. A lot of talk about business success and children. Revised romances. A couple guys over imbibe and embarrass themselves.

Thirtieth –The class officer and cheerleader types had gotten bored with the whole thing and the nonentities were taking over. Talk was about who had a new spouse and who had been caught with there hand in the cookie jar and was in jail and who had been through a drug rehab program and what a relief it is to have the kids out of the house. More lies about how well your children are doing, less about how well you are doing. A beloved old teacher or two was invited. Bald heads, gray hair, expanded belt lines and sagging bosoms.

Fortieth—no pretence at all. Everybody gets along well because the high school clicks don’t count any more. Talk about who is retired and who is dead. Somebody leads the group in a recitation of old English ballad we were all required to memorize and recite in senior English. Solicitation of contributions to alumni foundation. Tell lies about adventures as adolescents and who you had a terrible crush on when you were 17 years old. Trophy wives make their appearance. Women babble about grandchildren.

By all means go. Have a good time. In its own way high school was a misery for every one. Out of our class of 200, more or less, we get about 100 people plus spouses. Strangely, the people who don’t show up are the ones who still live in town.

12

Why would I want to go to see people I didn’t like?
I don’t do inane chatter very well, and I really don’t care what they have been up to. I did register at Classmates.com and check in there every so often, but I have found that things haven’t changed that much.