Are you going to a high school or college reunion this spring?

[+ WilliamM]

My biggest regret is not going back and visiting the teachers I liked, especially in grade school. I only did it was once, but what a wonderful experience.

[jonnychgo]

I have my 40th coming up this summer. Went to my 10th and enjoyed it. Everyone looked great and people did mingle but ended up sitting for dinner in old cliques. Went to 20th and was so bored. Many of the guys did not age well (at that time I was - now a lot heavier than high school but I was a skinny minny back then). Skipped 30 and plan to skip 40 as really no one I care to see and to be honest, do we really have anything to build a new friendship on. Plus with Facebook, who really needs reunions. Perhaps if I had a pornstar husband . . .

[handiacefailure]

Only one I went to was my 25th and that was thanks to facebook . My BFF in high school and college decided college wasn't for him his junior year and enlisted in the Navy and we ended up losing contact. Thanks to Facebook we found each other and he moved to San Diego and was coming home for his reunion so that was the main reason I went (a few other people I hung out with in HS also found me on FB). If it wasn't for that I wouldn't have gone.

 

I have never gone to a college reunion and have no desire to go since I am not in contact with anyone I went to college with other than those I went to high school with

[+ ArVaGuy]

I was bullied and beaten several times in high school and labeled class queer. I have no desire whatsoever to associate with anyone from that horrible time of my life.

 

There was a ten year reunion in 1991 that was organized by one of the "in crowd" students. She and her cheerleader clique purposely excluded certain students from even being invited. I was among them. By that time I was already out of the closet living in DC and this clique of popular kids were still living in Bossier City.

 

I'm not sure if there have been any reunions since that ten year gathering. If so, I must still be on the do not invite list.

[+ poolboy48220]

At my 20-year, I had just come out, and thinking back, I'd convinced myself that one of my classmates (the quarterback on the varsity team, no less) had been flirting with me senior year, and I'd just been too clueless back then to realize it. I was curious to look him up at the reunion. Same 70's hair, married, and flirting with all the former cheerleaders. Dashed that fantasy on the rocks :-(

[Rudynate]

In high school, I was thought of as being weird and was somewhat of an outcast. We moved at the end of my junior year, so I went to a completely different school for senior year. When I started at the new school, I promised myself that things were going to be different, and they WERE. Within a short time after school started, a popular crowd started to attach itself to me, and that year was much different from the previous three. In spite of finishing on a positive note, I've never had a desire to look up any of my classmates or go to any of the reunions. I was very glad to be done with it.

[LaffingBear]

Nope. I went to my 10-year.

 

Gay, in the 70s, alot of my high school friends were girls. I stayed friendly with them and became friends with their husbands. At the reunion, my female friends ran around to mingle while I sat and drank with the husbands. People - my classmates - kept walking by the table, laughing, and knowingly commenting, "heres a bunch of husbands..." Most people didnt even remember me. Eventually, the husbands and I moved to the public sports bar in the same hotel.

 

Now 1900 miles away, i see no point in returning for that.

[+ Charlie]

It's interesting to me how many of the posters here had a miserable time in high school, and usually because they were gay and didn't feel like they fit in. Even those who didn't know they were gay seem to have seen themselves as "different" from their classmates, and not accepted. I wonder if and how that has changed in recent years, as being gay has been somewhat "normalized," at least in more liberal parts of the country.

 

I knew I was gay from the time I was 13, but I always felt like an integral part of my high school class, even though I went to a very homogeneous middle class public school in the conservative 1950s. I have remained friendly with many of my classmates throughout my life, even though I have lived a rather different kind of adult life from most of them, and we are always happy to see one another at our infrequent get-togethers. Objectively, I had much more in common with my college classmates, yet I retained only one of my college friends beyond graduation. I need to reflect on why my experience of high school feels so different from the experience of so many of the people on this board.

[+ friendofsheila]

I went once and it was worthwhile because it showed me I'm not interested in going again.

 

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I did get to do something outrageous. I asked a borderline-hoodlum-guy, who I barely knew even back in the day, to dance. He froze, paused, and said "No," his eyes the size of dinner plates. I shrugged and said okay. In my peripheral vision I saw him pause again, then bolt out of the room.

 

Both of us came away with a good story that day!

[+ friendofsheila]

My biggest regret is not going back and visiting the teachers I liked, especially in grade school. I only did it was once, but what a wonderful experience.

 

Interesting. No teachers came to the 5 year one my school had. That would have made it worth my while.

[Epigonos]

I graduated from a very large (3,000 students in three grades) Los Angeles Unified School District high school with many students who had been in my kindergarten class and thus we had known each other for thirteen years. Upon graduation I when away to school and was gone for five years. During that time I lost contact with the nearly all of my high school friends. After graduating from college I joined the Peace Corps and spent two year in Latin America and thus lost contact with nearly all of my college friends. Upon returning from the Peace Corps I went back to school and got my teaching credential. I taught for thirty six years in one high school and most of my friends today are former colleagues from those days. I have never attended any of my class reunions. For better or worse I’m one of those people who adhere to the old adage “out of sight out of mind”. I have, however, been invited to numerous high school reunions of former students and have always had a wonderful time.

[BasketBaller]

It's interesting to me how many of the posters here had a miserable time in high school, and usually because they were gay and didn't feel like they fit in. Even those who didn't know they were gay seem to have seen themselves as "different" from their classmates, and not accepted. I wonder if and how that has changed in recent years, as being gay has been somewhat "normalized," at least in more liberal parts of the country.

If my sons' high school is at all typical, it has changed. Granted, a pretty liberal school in DC, and all boys, but there are openly gay kids, a gay-straight alliance, and at least one teacher, and no one seems to have a problem. The administration (Jesuit, by the way) is dedicated to diversity and tolerance. Do gay kids ever get teased, mistreated or bullied? I don't know, but I don't think so, I don't think most of the other kids would let it happen.

[+ friendofsheila]

It might be worth it to go to a later reunion and see how many people's waist measurement exceeds their age.

[+ FreshFluff]

High school reunions are pretty straightforward. In my <300 person class, everyone knew everyone and still does. Most of the cruel people either have mellowed or don't show up. In any case, there are no pretensions.

 

College reunions are a different story. My class was an order of magnitude larger and the event is an elaborate 3 or 4 day affair. My closer friends weren't here this time so I hung out with people I new less well. I also met some of the cool kids/athletes. I don't know what it is about these people, but they love to interrogate and qualify.

 

"So who were your friends here?" Me: I just met these people at the last reunion.

"But you say you went to X parties. Who did you know from X? Why didn't I know you?" This is all done under the guise of flattery, but it rankles.

 

Sometimes I wish that I could start the whole thing over because I'd do so much better now. And then I walk by the dorm I lived in for three years and get a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. That's when I remember how difficult the whole thing was.

 

The upside of having a big class full of pretentious people is that I met some interesting people with whom I had only a nodding acquaintance in college. I hope to keep in touch with some of them.

 

Oh yeah. I met a hot guy in my hotel elevator. I was wearing my reunion lanyard and he introduced himself as a member of my class. I was on my way to an event so I sort of blew him off. I was hoping to see him at the event last night, but he wasn't there.

[+ WilliamM]

Interesting. No teachers came to the 5 year one my school had. That would have made it worth my while.

 

Concerning going back to see grade school teacher many years later:

 

I had my cousin visit her first to make sure she remembered me. She did, despite all the decades that had done by. So it made it much easier to decide to see her, five states away.

[+ WilliamM]

In high school, I was thought of as being weird and was somewhat of an outcast. We moved at the end of my junior year, so I went to a completely different school for senior year. When I started at the new school, I promised myself that things were going to be different, and they WERE. Within a short time after school started, a popular crowd started to attach itself to me, and that year was much different from the previous three. In spite of finishing on a positive note, I've never had a desire to look up any of my classmates or go to any of the reunions. I was very glad to be done with it.

 

I was not as popular as you in the new school, but otherwise our experiences are the same.