Why would anyone go to a school reunion?
It’s a frigging school. You went and then you left.
I have never ever met anyone who wanted to, planned to, or did go a school reunion. Is it just an American thing?
Does anyone, anywhere else do this?
No me. I was incredibly shy and moved in between 10th and 11th grade. By the time I had finished college I had lost all contact with my very few, very superficial friends. I am planning on going to an alumni event at my college though - it’s been 20 years since I graduated. I might also go to a reunion dinner later that evening if there are people I want to see who are going.
I went to my 10th and 20th for year 10 (gives you an idea of my age :o ) and I had a great time at both.
The 20th was better because I got to see how people had really turned out away from their cliques at school.
It was great to catch up with people and see how the girls that you had the hots for turned out… 
And no, it’s not just an American thing. I’m an Aussie 
Now see maybe that explains it. I went to a girls school and had the hots for none of them.
Shit! Maybe my high school had a reunion for those with the hots and I just didn’t know about it.
To see old friends. Some of us made friends in high school.
I didn’t bother. I was in the college prep crowd (like many other Dopers) and a few years back, one of 'em decided to be the organizer and started contacting people through Classmates dot com. Some of us sort of developed a little e-mail newsgroup, sort of, and we all updated each other a little bit and shared some gossip. Then one person posted, “Hey, 1987 called. It wants its gossip back!” (I thought that was pretty funny.) But that really made me stop and think.
There were about 250 people in my class. We’d managed to find about 25-30 of us. All white, all college prep. No minorities, no auto shop people, nobody from the middle of the pack… just the educated elitists. I suddenly realized that all of us were going to fall right back into the roles we played in high school. Mine was a role I wasn’t entirely comfortable with, and I never really felt close to many of those people. Those that I was close to… I’m STILL close to and don’t need a reunion to see.
Secondly, through the course of all this gossip-sharing, there was one kid, The Geek of Our Class, who everyone wanted to find out about. What happened to this guy? Nobody knew. I realized that most of the class had picked on this poor fellow so mercilessly, that even if he had known about the reunion, he probably wouldn’t want to give any of us the time of day, regardless of what he was doing or where he was in his life. Nobody seemed to understand why attempts to reach him had failed. I thought it was obvious: why should this guy believe he owes any of us anything, much less a visit? If I were him, I’d blow us off too because the motivation to find him was merely morbid curiosity about what happened to him, not any sort of concern for his welfare or wellbeing. Typical shallow high school crap.
So 3-4 weeks before the reunion, I e-mailed the organizer, who happened to have been a good friend of mine in high school, and told her that somethings came up at work and I couldn’t get away so I wouldn’t be flying 1200 miles north for the party. That was not a lie or exaggeration, btw. I was managing a department of 10 people and the reunion was right in the middle of our busy season and it would have been really tough on my team to leave.
She hasn’t spoken to me since. Nice, huh? (Not that this has kept me awake at night or anything.)
I won’t be considering any future invitations. That chapter in my life is closed to further scrutiny. There’s no point in trying to re-live it and I don’t care what happened to most of those people.
It’s been ten years since I graduated HS, and apparently no-one’s bothered to organize a reunion.
Not that I’d go to it if it were on: I live and work on the opposite side of the country, and I’ll be moving to Peru at the end of August. Also, there’s the fact that I’ve kept in touch with the people I wanted to, and the people I’d like to see again aren’t the type to go to a reunion.
Yeah. Some of us did. Some of us kept them around as friends.
For those we lost contact with? Well there was a reason. No use in finding it was still the same reason 20 years later.
My best friend today is the friend I met my first year of high school. I still regularly see others (20+ years later). Do I see less people then I went to high school with? YEP!
I kept in contact with the people I cared about. The others I don’t give a shit about.
Why the hell would I want to see them now JUST because we went to the same school?
I got out 20 years ago and never looked back. Those few kids whose names I remember I either don’t care about or just plain can’t stand. I’m pretty sure the feeling is mutual–I was a bit of an odd duck.
I often joke that I spend four years hiding under my desk avoiding those people, and can see no reason to seek out their company now. I skipped my 10th and my 20th, and will likely skip my 25th in 2007, too.
I have either kept in touch, or since gotten in touch, with a couple people from high school, but most of the people I’d want to see were a year older or a year or two younger and wouldn’t be at my class’s reunion anyway.
I skipped my 20th a couple years ago.
There might be 2 or 3 people I’d be interested in seeing, but that’s it.
My best friend is a guy from the class after mine that I met the summer after graduation. That’s enough of a high school connection for me.
I hated High School and most of the people in it. Everyone had their bullshit cliques and was juist soo much better than everyone else.
I’ve already had my revenge. Many of the “hot” in-crowd girls got knocked up senior year, got married to the cool jock who was too rock-stupid to know how to use a condom, and moved into a trailer park.
The cool jocks and most of the “hicks” either work at auto-repair shops or are diesel mechanics. Most of my graduating class had no plans for higher education. The closest thing to “white-collar” many of them got is telephone customer service at a local cable tv support center. This was considered to be one of the best jobs in town.
I figure one day I’ll go back to visit my family, and take my car into one of the multiple shops where assholes from my class work, and ask “Hey Opie! (No shit, there was a red-head kid named Opie), you guys know how to work on a Mercedes?” That will be my revenge.
Well-said.
I went to my 20 year reunion for all of about 30 minutes. Nothing but overweight balding jocks and overly made up plastic pep squad cheerleaders. My 30 year is next year, I’ll most likely go to that one and stay just as long.
I dunno…I went to mine, and people I didn’t hang with for various reasons turned out to be interesting, fun, and the life of the party at my 30th. I was friendly with a few different “groups”. All that crap is pretty much forgotten when you reach a certain age. You’d probably have a good time if you went.
I went to my 10th and 20th. I was going to skip my 30th, but my one remaining friend from high school really wanted to go and begged me to come along.
Now I have email addresses for the handful of people I have any interest at all in keeping in touch with, so it’s unlikely I’ll go to any more, except maybe the 50th. And that would primarily be the “see, I haven’t died yet” celebration.
One of the saddest stories I know involves a high school reunion. Years ago I read a biography of Janis Joplin. During her teenage years in Port Arthur, Texas she was made to feel unlovely and she was basically an outcast. She left town and went on the road and became the great singer she was. She returned to Port Arthur for her high school reunion and, at this point of the story, I think (as Hollywood would have you believe) she will dazzle the hicks with her talent but no they just treat her like shit…again. She left Port Arthur and less than 5 years later she was both a legend and dead.
I’ll probably go to my 10 year reunion when it comes up. If it’s convenient. Just because there’s are a few old friends I’ve lost touch with, and I’m a little curious what’s become of them. Other than catching up with those few friends, it doesn’t sound like much fun. I doubt I’ll still care by the time the 20 year reunion rolls around.
I have utterly no interest in attending any of my reunions, nor in the people with whom I graduated.
I am a person completely lacking in nostalgia.
I hated those people when I was there…why would I go back to see them? Add to that the fact that I live a whole…12 miles from where I went to high school, and am on the campus several times a year for speech tournaments, and teach with several members of my graduating class…