Do you go to high-school reunions?

I do not. I hated my high school population - always seemed trashy to me. I hope to god I never see any of them again. I am not a nostalgia person.

No. What's the fucking point? A bunch of people who wanted nothing to do with me back then and if they had wanted to in the first place, would have kept in touch with me without a stupid "reunion". Besides, the only two I would even want to talk to have been dead for around thirty years.

R2 Agreed!

A positive thing about school reunions can be the pre-parties you do with your actual friends or at least a smaller group.

10 years isn’t long enough. I went to my 25th and it was fun.

I am neutral about my high school years. I neither loved it or hated it. The handful of friends drifted away over the years, so I no longer in regular communication with any of them. One did reach out to me to get me to go to the 25th anniversary reunion. I didn't have much interest in catching up with what others are doing with their lives. Perhaps if I had grown up in a small town instead of NYC I would have more of a connection to my high school, but I do not.

There have been 5 and I haven't gone to any of them. My 50th reunion was 2 years ago. I almost went, but I decided to do some research on the classmates I was close to back then, and they're all dead. As far as the rest of them are concerned, the passage of time has cancelled out any familiarity I once had with them.

10 year reunions are full of poseurs, and some HS drama is still unresolved. It’s fun to see previously attractive people begin to lose their looks though, I won’t lie. I could have skipped that one. At 20 years people are more true to who they really are, and are more open minded. People you may have not talked to in school might be more interesting now, or maybe you’ve become more interesting yourself. I can’t speak to 30 years, because the people planning mine thought going to a bowling alley and drinking cheap well drinks sounded fun. Hard pass. I went to my 40th a couple years ago, and I could not believe how many had died. I also found out who were hard core trumpers and got super religious, and who were more liberal. That was a surprise too. It was right before Covid actually, so I suspect more died or suffered through long covid.

I went to my tenth and while I can't say I regret going, if given a do-over I wouldn't have. It was nice to see some people and sad to see others, and as other posters have said, there were a lot of unresolved issues that were stirred up by the experience. Then add the stress of having to come out to 20 different people and deal with all their feelings about it.

I've never gone, because the few people I'd be interested in seeing also would never attend a high school reunion.

Those who go seem the types who were REALLY into high school.

Too many mistakenly see a high school reunion as merely revisiting their often unhappy high school years. My family moved to my school district while I was in the 2nd grade. At the last reunion I attended, I had my most enjoyable time talking to those with whom I also attended elementary school & it was those years we reminisced about.

I don’t believe in reunions, therefore they don’t exist.

I recently went to my 50th & enjoyed it thoroughly. It didn’t hurt that one of my classmates told me I looked like I was 43, another said, “Look at you,” & I caught a couple of people talking about me as they looked in my direction.

I’m on my way to my 50th as I write this. As luck would have it, it’s in a suburb of Chicago, so my flight is delayed 50 minutes. Fortunately, my high school and the reunion place are far from downtown, but friends have told me to expect to see ICE agents everywhere.

I haven’t lived there in more than forty years (I did spend a sabbatical there in 2003-04), but still have some cherished friends there, some of whom will be at the reunion. A friend is throwing a cross-year party tonight. I’m sad I can’t take my husband, but he has Alzheimer’s and it would confusing and too noisy. We flew 3 years ago and I realized he would be happier at home with his three wonderful, loving caregivers.

Went to my 40th and relieved at how well I had aged compared to most of the others. I guess the strain of kids and wives and mortgages really does take a toll.Happy to meet with the few I had been close to way back then...they were the same nice guys. One of them who I always suspected was closeted, had had a phenomenal career worldwide in finance and was spectacularly wealthy, and when he asked was I married and I said I was gay, I could tell in his eyes that he was interested. He hung around me for the rest of the evening, insisted we leave for a drink, and finally kissed me. Said he'd wanted to do that since we sat together in chemistry class all those years ago. A year later I got a call from a classmate that he had suddenly died of a brain hemorrhage. He was 61.

On the one hand they’re all right wing Republicans so no. On the other hand, having seen pictures from the 40th, I look better and weigh less than almost all of them so maybe I should.

I skipped my 10-year reunion, because it felt pointless. My 20-year reunion was during COVID times, so it never happened. This year would be the 25th, but I haven't heard any rumblings about holding one. In the social media era, reunions have become redundant.

Besides, from what I can tell from social media, a lot of my former classmates have turned into MAGA loonies. No thanks.

Enjoy your reunion, R14. What my class did which I thought was smart was to have photos taken of the many elementary schools that were the feeding system to our eventual high school. Too many people seem to think only of their often unpleasant high school experience when their reunions loom, when - especially if, like me, you spent most of your K-12 years in the same school district - the reunion brings together people you knew or at least knew of years before your high school years.

At my 40th, I greeted a bewildered guy from my elementary school - & later junior & senior high schools - who had no idea who I was. I get that people's faces can change, but this guy didn't even remember my name, which includes a distinct first name I know he never elsewhere encountered in our mutual schooling experience. I didn't bother trying to refresh his memory by mentioning we went to elementary school together. Fast forward another ten years, & we found ourselves standing next to each other in our elementary school photo. I greeting him with a welcoming, "Hi, Patrick." I got the same bewildered look. But at least I got the unspoken pleasure of letting him know how far back we went.

[quote] I skipped my 10-year reunion, because it felt pointless. My 20-year reunion was during COVID times, so it never happened. This year would be the 25th

My school has had a 5th, 10th, 20th, 30th, 40th & 50th reunion. No 25th.

What gets me is the determination of the people who set these things up. I graduated 50 years ago, and they somehow got my email address and have been peppering me with class and reunion news. After all these years, who cares? The last reunion I was aware of they decided to hold on a rented passenger ferry, for an hours-long cruise. No way to put in an appearance and make an early exit? No thanks.

I went to my 20th and 25th and neither was a happy experience.

But I had a great time at my 30th college reunion.

Before attending my 50th high school reunion, I watched a number of 50th reunions on YT. A depressing experience, especially for the more rural schools. Most of the attendees - the cream of the crop? - looked ancient.

[quote] But I had a great time at my 30th college reunion.

I've never heard of any college reunions for my class. Or a law school reunion, for that matter. I'd go the the latter, but definitely not the former.

^to the latter

Absolutely not. My 10 year reunion was on a Friday night - those of us who worked in the city couldn’t make it. And I never returned since.

The only people who go to reunions are the people who were popular so no I have never and would never go.

Never had any interest in going. I was always off doing my own thing even during High School. The few people I was friends with have remained friends since graduation. In my life, I don't see a point to it.

I was all set to attend my 25th high school reunion, even flew into town for the occasion.

At the last minute, I decided I didn't want to go. Instead, I went over to an old friend's house, we got high, and then we went out to the tubs. Once there, I had one of the hottest, most intense sexual encounters of my life.

You are mistaken, R25. I’m a regular attendee & I encounter many wallflowers like me.

My 40th reunion is sneaking up in a couple years. I would rather DIE IN A FUCKING GREASE FIRE than go.

I went to my tenth and had mixed feelings. It was fun to see some teachers and some nice kids I hadn't thought about in forever. I didn't enjoy seeing my close school friends who I kept a relationship with into adulthood and had drifted away in later years. Plus, as R9 said, having to come out to people over and over and over was really exhausting. The big surprise was a guy that I was somewhat friendly with in school that wanted to hook up that night. He was really cute, but I was too frazzled and emotional after the day and just wanted to get home.

I eschewed my twentieth, thirtieth, and fortieth reunions. God help me if I'm still alive for the fiftieth.

I’ve found that all the high school cliques are dissolved in the brief window of time we have together at reunions. Sure, it’s superficial, but that’s okay. And it offers some great people watching enjoyment.

My 10 year was a good one. It was enough time that peoples' lives had evolved and some people were quite different from high school. The people I wanted to see were mostly pretty happy with what they were doing and where their lives were. There were the usual cliches--the jock who'd gone to seed physically and his wife, the homecoming queen, who'd gone like wise---they actually were nice people and he died young from cancer. There were guys who'd lost their hair already and more than one beauty who'd lost her figure. There was one woman who bizarrely thought she'd "Made it" because she was working as a cigarette girl in Vegas--I didn't know that they still existed.

Just went to my 40th and had a great time. I went to a small, private school and I have kept up with several friends - especially since moving back to my hometown with my husband. Some people remember high school fondly and some hated it. But while you think people didn't like you back then, they probably didn't think much about you one way or another. They were too caught in their own "so called lives". Not to sound shitty, but you were just not that important to them. I thought for years that certain people didn't like me in high school only to go to a reunion and have them be just as nice and authentic as anyone else. So much of adolescent angst was in our own heads. Let it go. Bitter and old are a toxic combination.

No. I was not very social in high school. It was mostly my fault (or at least the fault of my temperament), but as a non-athletic gay boy I was also scarred by earlier experiences with many of the same people (I was with about 25% from grade school). I didn’t fit in then and I have no interest in feigning a camaraderie today that I did not feel back then.

I've read that high school reunions are about "making it right."

God I hated high school.

I switched high schools mid-year during my senior year so I fell off the radar when it came to reunions.

ONLY with replacement former classmates attending.

Not a story I would tell anywhere except an anonymous board...

My experience at my 15th was a cliche. I was the last kid in my high school class to reach puberty. I was the smallest kid. I was smart but not smart enough to stand out. My only friends were the ones who no one else would be friends with. I was bullied, but not terribly,, because I didn't stand out enough for anyone to care. I was really unhappy and wished someone would like me. I hated going to school.

Then I went to college and began to grow and fill out. I went from being bland looking to being handsome. After some remarkable travels around the world I ended up in NYC where I ended up in a job where I was low-level famous. So I go to the reunion and people kept asking who I was because either I had changed so much no one recognized me or, more likely, no one remembered me. (One guy even came up to me when I was in the bathroom and asked me if I'd really been in the class.) People gathered around me and wanted to stay in touch, hang out, know more about me. Etc. It was like a movie, it all went so well.

And that was that. I got my satisfaction from showing them who I had become and I never went to another reunion. Now that I'm more well-known a lot of them friend me on Facebook and I generally friend back (although I'm now at the friend-limit so I have a great excuse not to).

The weird thing is, even now, 40 years later, I still think about high school a lot and what I missed by not being a normal kid. And even though no one else in my class went on to anything particularly interesting, I still think sometimes I would trade their normal lives for everything I went through.

I finally caved and went to my 25th in 2010, and had a pretty good time. But to go every 5 years? Hell no. One and done.

If you've stayed in touch with some of your friends or you're just curious...go.

I went to a small, all boys, Jesuit high school. I'm close friends with a good handful still, so I go to reunions. As you get older, people don't give a shit anymore about careers et al.

I too am surprised at how some classmates -- straight, married with kids -- look. Exercise is a foreign word to them!

No. A lot of them would be dead now and I don't want to know.

My apologies for not signing my post!

No desire. High school was traumatic.

HS was traumatic for me too. Fuck those sad ass bitches.

I was known more because my older brother was a big sports star. Once I knew I was gay I disappeared from the social scene because I knew when the parties started and people started pairing up that wouldn't work for me. I never considered going to a reunion.