40th High School Reunion

Post Reply New Topic

My 40 year high school reunion is this Friday night.

I'll probably go since it is only about two miles away. My guess is that about 30 or 40 of my classmates will show up, at most, out of a total of 63 in the class. A few of the class have died -- I know of three, one from a car accident, one from a motorcycle accident and one committed suicide. There are several in the class who live nearby, but I only see two of them occasionally.

I nearly missed the last one, but I almost had an excuse since I wasn't feeling very well.

I'm not looking forward to it at all, but it's one of those things that I feel like I ought to attend. Probably won't stay longer than an hour or so.

My sister's 50th high school reunion is the same night, but she's not going. She lives about 350 miles away and her grandson's birthday party is on Saturday so she has a really good excuse not to go.

Does anyone else go to their reunions? How do they go?

I graduated from HS in 1980. By my estimate they must've had at least three 10-year reunions. I've never been to any. I've never known about them because I've moved around a lot. Still, though, I wouldn't go because I came to despise my HS. I was always an outsider, a square peg, the one that didn't fit in. For me to go I would have to be kicking and screaming with a 9mm pointed at my neck.

One thing that I've noticed from mine is that the bullies don't show up at all. The people who show up are generally the ones I got along with the best.

One of the bullies from my class only lives 35 miles away from the school (20 miles north of me). I haven't seen him at all since graduation. I missed my first reunion, but he hasn't shown up to any of the rest of them and I doubt that he showed up to that one.

That guy is a real mess. He went to work for an oil company after graduation where he drove a truck for a while before moving on to other things in the company. One day his boss told him to either wash the windows on his truck or break them out -- he went and got a hammer and broke out every window in the truck.

I went to the first reunion, hung around for a while, and then left. Hardly anyone spoke to me there, except for the people checking reservations and handing out name-tags. The women had mostly gotten fat and cranky, and most of the guys were arguing over whether the band should play disco or C&W. I went home, baked a pizza, cracked open a six-pack, and watched movies on my Betamax.

Most of the bullies have died in the last 40 years. One in a refinery fire, another from brain cancer, another joined Blackwater and was blown up in Iraq, another drove his van into a tree and the unsecured load he was carrying crushed him against the steering column, another denied he had AIDS until the day he died, two died in prison, and most of the rest overdosed on drugs in various forms and combinations.

Occasionally, a classmate or two will show up and ask for a handout, pretending to have always been my best friends, and expecting me to forget the crap that they once put me through. I'm only too happy to remind them of it, however, and they eventually go away.

I went to my 10 year. All the women were married and so happily pregnant, gleefully expecting the joys of parenthood. This was in 2003, which was a little like having kids in the late 1920s. Within a few years everybody was broke, with massive bills. There was no 15 year reunion. There will likely be no 20 year reunion, although I refuse to join Classmates to find out, since my senior prom date found me on there and sent me email bragging about her life. Of course, when I replied back she ignored me, and continued to brag, off and on. Finally I changed my email, since that's the only way to get off Classmates. "A" is still weird, I see. I gave up on dating long ago since I only attract badly neurotic women. Anyway, I explained to everybody at the reunion that I acted weird in HS because of my aspieness and mental illness. They forgave me, which was nice. Now, I hardly ever think about HS. I don't know what happened to the bullies.

^Yeah, same here. There's no one and nothing from that time that I really care to be reminded of. I wouldn't even go there now to suicide-bomb the place.

And, being on disability and living with parents at 40 -- yeah, I'm not interested in playing the who-has-the-coolest-life bragging game.