(Sorry, this started as a short note but became a rant.)
I went to my tenth in the summer of 2002. Let me rephrase that --- I *saved* our tenth.
Having been to the 'family day' of my father's 20th reunion (and seen several of *my* school friends), I expected the reunion to be a lot of fun. Boy was I wrong.
Early on, a 'committee' of sorts was assembled via e-mail by a few of us that were still in contact. I tried to keep myself out of any important roles --- and agreed to make contact with people. (Strangely enough --- although I don't remember it, my
sister says that I was *cough* popular [?] in high school. I think that I was simply acquainted with more people. We were the token white kids in our neighborhood, so we had the minorities covered. I had honors classes with the rich kids. I was also a gearhead/greasemonkey and hung out with the rednecks.)
The girls that did take charge decided to use a reunion planning service. The service was nice, although overpriced. They did all of the grunt work, but still needed a local contact for odd jobs. Who is the only sucker that's still local? Me.
The reunion was a flop. There were three events:
1. Friday night informal meeting at a local bar. Most people went to this. It was free. ZZZ.
2. Saturday 'family day' at the high school. A few families with kids showed up, but it was generally TOO DAMN HOT in August to hang around a school with no A/C. Here's where my odd jobs come in -- I had to arrange the refreshments for everyone, and make sure that the custodian was paid to open up the school. (I ended up walking down to the football field and talking to my favorite Physics teacher / football coach.)
3. Saturday night 'formal dinner' in a banquet room at a local hotel. The food was okay, but we were stuck down in the bowels of the hotel, where people have banquets when they don't plan ahead. The only yearbook on hand was mine. This cost $70 a head to attend, so very few showed up. (The reunion service had to make their money *somewhere*!) We took a group photo with a crappy photographer, who charged us too much for crappy prints. We had more fun at the "lets go to a bar" after-party party.
I doubt that I'll attend a 15th or 20th. I definitely will not assist with any more. You're not missing anything. People don't change, and the cliques and other bullshit never go away.
I left the reunion with only one or two additional contacts. You'll find that you never lose contact with the people that you really care about, or really want to keep in touch with --- even if it's just email.
