I went to my 20th high school reunion last year. I waffled for a few months about going or not since my hometown is a five hour drive north of Edmonton and I wasn’t sure it would be worth the effort but in the end I decided to go. It was rather informal, it was just at a bar, organized on Facebook by one guy I graduated with who I barely knew back in high school.
23 people came out of a grad class of 246, and it was mostly just middle of the road people that I rarely interacted with from high school. Aside from my best friend who went to the reunion with me, none of my closest friends from my high school days went, but neither did any of the people I hated come to the reunion. Because it was mostly people I barely knew there really wasn’t a whole lot of “catching up” to do with any of the people that were there but it was still enjoyable.
The highlight of the night for me was apologizing to this guy who I had basically bullied from grade 1 onwards for all the shit I used to give him. He accepted the apology and said that he didn’t even remember any of it but that he appreciated the sentiment. Part of me wonders if he thought that maybe my apology to him was part of an A.A. thing which makes me laugh, but one way or another it felt good to get that off my chest after all the shit I gave him going back to 1991 because in all honesty I think the guy was possibly autistic or something, but back then he was just considered stupid and weird so no one was ever nice to him when we were kids and he effectively had no friends. I feel bad for him though, because he’s had a rough go in the last 20 years - both his parents have died, and he got divorced and his wife took their son all the way to Ontario so he barely gets to see him. Listening to him tell me all this made me very sad for him and made me feel even worse about what an asshole that I had always been to him when we were kids.
A bonus to the reunion was earlier in the day a classmate of mine who had since became a teacher at our high school offered to give a tour of the school to anyone that was interested. I think only about four people took her up on the offer, including myself and my best friend, but it was neat revisiting the school after all that time.
There had been an attempt by about 3 or 4 girls that i graduated with to try and organize a 10 year reunion in 2013 which would have been a more formal affair at a banquet hall and catered and shit, but it fell apart in the last 6 weeks. The facebook group had almost 200 people in it but because of the cost of the hall they needed to presell tickets which would have been $100 a person. As the deadline approached for the point of no return for them to cancel the booking for the banquet hall without incurring any cost they’d only sold 6 tickets so the organizers pulled the plug and proceeded to scold everyone in the Facebook group for their lack of commitment.
If there’s a 30 or 40 year reunion I’ll probably try to attend again.
