So RANDOM only a modern millionaire with a sinister plan could understand!

[fishjim]

I bailed on my 10th, and from the sound of things, I didn't miss much. But I did go to my 20th, and had a great time. The general feeling there was that reunions just get better as you get older.

EDIT: Sad but revealing footnote: Like FB, reunions are a self-selecting community. The only people who go to them are people who are in a stable and reasonably happy place in their lives. The people who are struggling don't go, for financial & emotional reasons.

Less than a year after my 20th, an old member of our HS circle committed suicide. She hadn't been at the reunion, and in retrospect it's clear why not.  

[jess]

Wonder if my ten year high school reunion will be a total shitshow or just really boring and depressing. I will not be there to find out!

Did I ever mention how I largely despised high school

Man I am so, so glad that I didn't go to mine!

I mostly hated high school, and I am actually really glad I went to mine. It felt good going and talking to people and kind of making my own peace with it in a way. Vaguely interesting to see some people, nice to see a few, eye-rolling for others, but on the whole, totally fine, I liked being able to go back to a place where I once felt so miserable and out of control now that I'm largely happy with myself and my life and to be there and be ok with it. Wasn't really as much about the other people for me I guess.

[mountmccabe]

I think it can depend a lot on what sort of events are involved in the reunions.

My high school had two, separate nights of events. Friday night was casual, drinks and appetizers outside. Saturday night was a more formal dinner and dance.

I went Friday and really enjoyed it; I could talk to whoever I wanted and if I felt weird or out of place I could gravitate to some of the friends I had kept in close touch with.

I skipped Saturday and while some of my friends that were more social in high school had a great time other friends found it restrictive and boring; there was far less mingling.

[peacocks]

I thought high school was ok but I don't really have a desire to reunite.

[Anne the Man]

I would be more interested in a primary school reunion. I don't really care about high school, it was pretty whatever. Not that it's been that long, but still.

[Antero]

I thought high school was ok but I don't really have a desire to reunite.

Yeah, all the people I'm really interested in seeing I'm already in internet-contact with.

[alex]

I felt weirdly tempted to go to my high school reunion last year, despite not enjoying high school very much at all and not having been particularly close with my classmates (by the last few years of school, I mostly had friends outside of school, most of them a little older). I think it's mostly because I don't do Facebook, so I can't stalk these people in the traditional way. I probably would've gone if I lived closer, but it didn't work out logistically at all. I did end up meeting up for a coffee with the person who sent me the invitation e-mail (who seems a lot nicer now than when we were still in school) and two people that I was actually friends with at the time (one of whom I still see occasionally, the other one I'd fallen out of touch with) next time I was home, though. It was rather nice, actually. And according to what they told me about the actual reunion, I don't think I missed too much.

That said, our reunions are hardly comparable to US ones, anyway, as the concept of a "class" is extremely different: our classes usually consist of 20-30 students who have nearly all of their lessons together (not because the school is so tiny, but because a year is grouped into several smaller units, so you'd have the vast majority of your lessons together with the same 20-30 other people, rather than with the 80-120 people that are in the same year as you). By the time we graduated, there were actually only 16 or 17 people in our class, so our reunion was by definition on a much smaller scale. Our four-person unofficial mini-reunion wasn't even that much smaller than the real thing (which if I remember correctly, probably featured about 12 of my classmates plus a couple of teachers).

The only person I really want to see from my school is my history teacher, but the last couple of times I asked him to have a beer with me he declined (for very understandable reasons, and with strong emphasis on how he really wishes it will work out next time), and now I don't have his e-mail address anymore and feel like contacting him at school would be vaguely stalkerish.

[clare]

School here (Canberra specific) works differently. High school is year 7-10. I hated those years, that school and those people. I have not been to any reunions, and I'm not sure there have been any. College (year 11-12) was fucking fantastic. We had a reunion at 10 years and it was just like we'd never left, hook ups and all. We had another reunion at 20 years, and while it was less fun, it was much better attended than the 10 year one. It was good enough that we're having a 25th this year :-) I now see it as an opportunity to catch up IRL with people I'm in fb contact with, but don't feel confident enough to say "hey, let's meet up" when we're in the same city. There are usually two element - a formalish thing on the Saturday night, and an informal bbq thing on the Sunday - both are fun.

My uncle just went to his 50th and had a blast. He wore his school blazer and an approximation of the rest of the uniform.

School reunions=win

[elpollodiablo]

I did a ton of drugs in high school, and my specific memories of it are really sketchy--the only stuff that seems to have made lasting impressions are moments of acute suffering, embarrassment and torment, and then the good times that I had with friends with whom I've stayed relatively close. So partially it's that a reunion probably would not hold for me the appeal of nostalgia or the grotesque curiosity of seeing how much everyone's changed--I very barely remember a lot of these people. But, what caused me to post about reunions initially was both the recent 10 yr invitation I received and a long weekend spent in the company of some cousins whose life paths far more closely resemble those of many of the people I went to high school with: they drive big trucks, openly carry pistols, and have an innate distrust of difference. I find it sort of difficult to make conversation with them, because we have very, very few common interests.

[davy]

I loved high school and I'm still close friends with almost all of my close friends from that time. We skipped out on the 10th, though, because it cost like $75 to join up, and eff that.

[YojimboMonkey]

My 25-year is coming up next year. They started planning that shit like 2 years ago--I've had a facebook invite for at least that long that I've been ignoring. Went to 10 & 15, skipped 20 but mostly 'cause we were doing a lot of traveling that summer & didn't have the scratch for that one extra trip to qcy. Probably will do the 25-year next summer but I'll be damned if I sign up for it this goddamn early.

[YojimboMonkey]

& the reunions have been mostly me and my friend sitting in a corner drinking and making fun of other people--so in fact much like high school. However there's usually at least one person I'll run into that surprises me by having turned into a human being since then. And there's a possibility that for some other people I am the person who surprises them.

[El_Josharino]

I skipped my 10th last year. It was a hastily arranged golf outing and then going to a bar to watch a football game, all organized via facebook event. My class was only about 70 people to begin with, and I think only 20 or so bothered to show up, none of which I was very close with in high school. I don't really see it being much different in future reunions, as while we mostly got along fine back then, it was mostly because nobody wanted to put forth the effort required for active dislike, and that apathy seems to have remained over the years.

[monkeypants]

So far I've skipped my 10th and 20th. Have no idea if a 25th is planned but I won't be in a position to attend anyway (I'll be in school.)    I don't guess I was completely miserable in high school but neither do I look back at those years with much affection, and I'm just not particularly compelled to see any of those people in person at this point.  Who knows though?  Maybe by the 30th curiosity will be enough to lure me back. 

[Ashley]

I don't know how high school reunions work.  Who puts them together?

[clare]

The person with the most enthusiasm. Not necessarily the best organisational skills. In the case of our 10 year, me and a friend, but it was pretty hasty. In the case of the 20th, someone else, but with much more lead time and much more organisation. the same person is doing the 25th :-) Once you've got a database going, it's pretty easy to  pass on to someone else though.

[Nick Ink]

[C of heartbreak]

I just got a performance evaluation phrasebook. Who wants to play performance evaluation madlibs?

[jebreject]

okay!

[Bernard]

internet rabbit holes, sometimes you take me to wonderful places

[elpollodiablo]

Finally scrubbed my google search results of all but the most oblique connections to my Twitter feed!

[RoyBiggins]

how'd you do that?

[elpollodiablo]

-Deleted my Gmail address from my Twitter profile
-Disconnected my Twitter account from my G+ account
-Deleted my old Buzz profile

You can still dig through the results and find my Twitter handle, but there aren't any direct links any longer. Someone would have to care enough to find it and then go to Twitter and look it up. I use my Twitter account mostly to drop big cusses and post snark, so it's not the kind of thing I'd want prospective employers seeing necessarily, but if they really really want to find it I guess they still could.

[hannah]

internet rabbit holes, sometimes you take me to wonderful places

hahahahaha

[jess]

-Deleted my Gmail address from my Twitter profile
-Disconnected my Twitter account from my G+ account
-Deleted my old Buzz profile

You can still dig through the results and find my Twitter handle, but there aren't any direct links any longer. Someone would have to care enough to find it and then go to Twitter and look it up. I use my Twitter account mostly to drop big cusses and post snark, so it's not the kind of thing I'd want prospective employers seeing necessarily, but if they really really want to find it I guess they still could.

My twitter is basically the exact opposite from that. The screen name is my first initial middle initial last name (which is why I'm not going to post it here, but it's also the same as my gmail), and it's professional (although I follow some stuff that's not). That's also why I barely tweet though, but I keep meaning to start using it more to talk about cool things I'm reading etc besides just posting when I publish stuff, etc. I do have a decent amt of followers consider I have all of 16 tweets though, and some of them are people in my field I otherwise don't interact with, so that's cool.

Otherwise if I have a twitter, I pretty much have to have it locked down. Mine used to be personal and private, but that seems contrary to the spirit of twitter (the private account part), so I deleted the old stuff and switched it to its current format.