Wood shop, metal shop, auto shop and eventual dropout guy checking in…
It’s a long way from here to Miami, Florida, but there are a few guys from high school that I wouldn’t mind seeing, learn how it turned out for them and so forth. There are about seven or eight girls that would probably love it if I showed up. They could give me one last, richly deserved, “fuck you” face to face. I could shoot it right back at them, and that would be just as richly deserved. You know the kind I favored. Flashy, slightly slutty girls that didn’t go home after school. They hung around stores and places, drinking cokes and smoking cigarettes. Yeah, several of them owe me a “fuck you”, as I do them.
There’s one girl I’d like to see, if her platinum-blonde hair has turned a scraggly gray and she has added 200 more pounds to her skinny-assed five foot, three inch frame. I’d pay money to see that!
But then, Linda might be there and I ain’t got the guts to face her. Hell, I don’t even have the guts to send an email to her.
I don’t want to hijack this thread, so, coming soon to an IMHO thread near you: A poll Re: Linda & reunion.
I’ll preface this by saying that I attended a “college preparatory school” instead of a high school. Not a boarding school or anything, but definitely a upper-middle class and above, academically oriented school.
I went to my 10th anniversary in 2001, and was pleasantly surprised. Everyone was the same, except a lot more mature. A number of them apologized to me for harassing me in school and commented on how impressed they were with my handling of it. Many of them were just happy to see me.
That was the “cool”/“jock”/“budding frat-boy” crowd.
The nerdy types were pretty much the same, except they actually had wives, girlfriends and usually lucrative careers. They were happy to see me.
One thing- the nerdy types commented that it was “just like school” where the “cool types ignore us”.
I saw it in high school, but not so much at the reunion. 10 years later, it was more of a matter of a lack of a common frame of reference. Most of the jock/frat-boy types had gone to the same few colleges and had kept up with each other, and the nerds had done the same. They hadn’t kept up with each other though, so when the anniversary rolled around, everyone just hung out with their old friends. Since I’d been a weird combination of a pretty good athlete and a really good student, I was friends with people in both groups.
I was actually surprised and pleased with how many of my sometime persecuters had matured and were actually fun to be around nowadays. I think if the nerdy types felt unwelcome, it’s most likely because they came in with preconceived notions.
Probably me. I started developing schizophrenia my senior year and was the butt of many jokes as a result of it. If I went back most people would either feel sorry for me or harass me, neither of which appeals to me much so I have no intention of doing so.
Part of the reason is that I still live in the same town where I attended HS, and so I end up seeing a lot of people, and their parents, that way, especially through working at the public library.
The other reason is this: whenever I end up in a crowd of people from my HS class, which is rather too often anyway, it only takes me about 2 minutes to start feeling like a 15 year old again – and not in a good way. I start worrying about my hair, my clothes, if what I’m saying is stupid.
I don’t worry like that, in that insecure way, when I’m not in that situation. So forget it.
On the plus side, people that I barely knew in my HS graduating class have turned out to be good friends. Maybe our lack of a shared past, except for that one common link, has helped. But of the people I used to be “friends” with in HS, I’ve kept up with no one. We were friends more by circumstance than personality, in most cases.
I just don’t like parties that much. I hate the awkwardness of chit chatting, standing around with a drink in my hand. I can do it, but it is just not my idea of a good time.
There are several people I’d like to find out how they turned out, but probably most of those won’t even be there. Some of them moved before senior year, or were a year ahead or a year behind.
I don’t think my curiosity is enough to motivate me to put on pantyhose and stand around trying to think of what to say for several hours.
A recent thread reminded me of why I wouldn’t go to my high school reunion. There are perhaps five people in my entire (700-plus students) graduating class that I ever even want to see again. I don’t have to go to a reunion for that, and there’s no other reason I’d go to the reunion otherwise. Tenth is next year. Something is definitely coming up.
I went to my 10th and skipped my 20th. I doubt I’ll ever go to another. I had nothing to say to those people in high school and I have nothing to say to them now.
Last year was my 20th. I didn’t go. I thought about it for maybe 15 minutes before deciding it wasn’t something I cared to do.
I haven’t kept in touch with anyone and, while I had some good friends, they weren’t the kind of soul mate friends I had in college. I really wasn’t interested in seeing how they turned out. I don’t hate them or anything (I have some fun high school memories). They just aren’t that important to me anymore. I would have liked to have seen some of my old teachers, but they’ve retired.
Plus, if I’d gone to school in some place that was really fun to visit or I had family around, it may have been worth the trip. But it was in Indianapolis and all my family has since moved out of the city. All that would have brought me there was the reunion. I didn’t think I’d enjoy spending all that time and money on a weekend in Indy with only a date and some people I don’t know anymore.
It’s interesting how many people have posted who, like me, have their 25th in 2007.
I didn’t go to my 10th or 20th. I simply have zero interest. I didn’t really enjoy those years but I’m not bitter. My lack of enjoyment was my own doing. I don’t care all that much what anyone is doing and I have nothing to prove. Why bother?
No, no, and no! We had our 10th renunion last year, and I’ve got two problems. First of all, like many Dopers I presume, I graduated a year early so most of my friends were in the graduating class the year before me. So I have no interest in going to my own, I hardly knew anyone.
Secondly, I hated high school. HATED it. I went to a very Republican, upper-class, white school, and if you weren’t white, you just weren’t all that important. And because of my strict parents, I was really only allowed to make friends with Indian kids. (I made friends with white kids but they couldn’t call me at home, and I couldn’t bring them home or go out with them anywhere.
I didn’t know about the earlier ones, but I made the 20th and 25th reunions. I enjoyed them. There is an immense truth behind the saying that the best revenge is living well.
I went to my 10 and 20 year high school reunions, and on the whole I enjoyed them. There were people there both times I was interested to see. Even though I didn’t keep in touch with anybody from my high school years, I didn’t have a particularly bad time in high school, and I had quite a few friends then. So it was nice to see some of them again.