Pajiba

Went to my 10 year high school reunion, haven't been back since (this year will be my 30th). The popular girls were either SAHMs or had sucky bank or teaching jobs, despite having gone to much better colleges than I could afford. I remember that the loser guys didn't come and the jocks and popular guys were mostly married, some to their hs girlfriends, and had gotten fat. I weighed exactly the same as I had when I graduated, but everyone remarked on how thin I had gotten... guess it's all relative to how everyone else looks.

I have always heard that people who attend their reunions go because they believe they have been more successful in life than everyone else in their class, but the ones who are actually successful (and happy with their lives), don't bother to go because they don't need the confirmation from ex-peers. I tend to agree with that.

As someone who spent a good deal of time in therapy because of events that happened in high school, I wanted to go to see old friends, but also to have closure on the people and events that made my life hell. I got my hair done, made Mr. Scorzi come (he's the hot one in the relationship and knew I had to do this for myself), and made sure to wear the fancy Tiffany ring he had gotten me. We agreed I would stay for 2 hours and then we'd leave no matter what.

I was surprised that I was one of the few people who had branched out from where we had grown up. I was living (and still live) in New York; 90% of the people I graduated with still lived around where we went to school. They were married with kids, some looked better, most got chubbier. One of my friends who was massively geeky turned out to be hot and successful and I was so proud of him. One extremely girly girl came out as a butch lesbian. There were a few bitches who hadn't changed, but what changed was MY behavior. Instead of running away or crying as they said cutting remarks, I just introduced my (hot and successful) date, namedropped the company I worked for (at the time I had a great job before the economy got bad) and they were shocked we lived in New York. Mr. Scorzi is the king of passive-aggressive comments, and after burning a few of the snobby girls he became great friends with the former "losers" and made people laugh and had a good time. I hugged the few people I wanted to see, had a few glasses of wine, and we left after 2 hours like we planned.

The moral? There will ALWAYS be assholes wherever you go. Some will apologize years later, some will never own up to anything, and the losers always end up hot, rich, and happier than most of the people there. Go once if you want closer, then skip the rest of them.

Kate the great, you are my new hero! That story was fantastic.

Much of my class dropped out of school, got pregnant/got someone pregnant, and/or went to jail. My suspicions were mostly correct.

I underestimated the number of girls coordinated enough to be strippers, though, especially the bigger girls. Apparently, there's a 250lb+ stripper market. Good for them.

NotClaiming credit: There is! I was offered a job in a gentlemen's club, and even though I already knew that wasn't my cup of tea, I decided to check out the place to see how good-looking the girls there were (so I could compare myself to them, of course.) And some didn't really have any shape to them at all.

But I guess some people prefer their rolls with jelly...

I went to my 10-year two years ago. High school was fine for me, not horrible, not super awesome. But I thought it would be fun to see them. Most people were pretty much the same as I remembered, some were married, some had kids, some were still kind of assholes and some got awesome. I too was one of the only ones who had moved more than a few dozen miles from my home town, and I had a cool job. I also was lucky enough to look better than I had in high school.

I might go back for the 20-year, but probably not. I do find that Facebook has made these events a bit anti-climatic: I've found the people I lost touch with who I wanted to find, and beyond that I don't particularly care anymore.

I don't do reunions, I like to keep moving forward. My only regret is not having achieved my dream of driving around in a van (or sweet buggy) solving mysteries with my best buds and budettes....yet.

How prescient! My 20-year reunion (gulp) is next weekend. I'm not going.

I actually was always "planning" to go; I went to my 10-year. It was OK. But at the 10-year there were a couple of events that were at a bar, or otherwise free. Apparently, the organizers of our 20-year have EVENTS planned. Events that cost money and/or are insane: on Saturday, golf. (WTF?!?) Then, overnight, a camping trip. (WTF!!? Bitches, I don't camp.) Then, on Sunday, a picnic. Well, that sounds nice, you say. Ah, but they want $25 for it, and they'll provide the food. Well, no thanks.

Really, I live in the city I grew up in, and I'm still in touch with a number of people I went to high school with. Might there be someone at the reunion that I'm not in touch with, who has actually turned into a cool and interesting person? Maybe. Am I willing to spend money and/or golf and/or camp to find that out? Nope.

If you hated high school, and feel like you need some revenge, and you can REALLY work it like kate the great, then do it. But if you just "meh'd" high school, and your curiosity about how people turned out is low-to-medium, then I say: Skip it!

I had no idea where I'd be 10 years into the future when I was in high school. The only thing I wanted to do was play guitar in a band.

I graduated from college with a BA in English, basically tooled around for about two years, went back to school and got certified to teach. The band thing didn't really pan out, so now I'm an English teacher and high school football coach.

I went to my five-year reunion but don't remember anything about it except that everyone was drunk (self included). I didn't get to go to my 10-year because I had a football game.

Kinda lame, I reckon.

Oh and to answer the actual question... I'm nowhere near where I thought I'd be when I was 17 but in a way that I'm satisfied with. I thought I'd be a school or regular psychologist and be married with at least one kid. Instead I do crime scenes for the police (which is awesome, I might add) and am completely single and childless. Life never takes you where you think it will.

I didn't get invited. I'm not bitter,really. Apparently, when they googled me I came up as a screenwriter living in NZ. Well, yea for me/not me!
So, now that I actually have gotten to know a lot of these people through Facebook (you know, things like how fracking insane they are,what kind of bibles they thump and how seriously,political leanings and music/movie/book tastes.) I find that some of the people I thought were insane cocktards are actually pretty cool, the metalheads are uber fruits who do things like Doctoring,accounting etc..WTF? And the aimless layabouts like myself still do nothing more than plan crazy parties and go to conventions (for the booze and mockery...and pinching fillion's ass)
All in all, I enjoy the idea of reunion,as long as there is booze involved and people have cameras!

My 10 year high school reunion was last year. I swore to everyone within earshot that I would never step foot into that reunion. But of course on the night of the reunion I was persuaded to go.

I have a strange habit of turning into a total lunatic when I'm feeling self-conscious. So, I spent my reunion talking to the select few I actually liked and taking every name tag I could find and sticking it to myself. I believe I had about 15 or so by the end of the evening. I didn't take them off the table. I took them off people.

Yep, I haven't changed.

Reunions? Fuck that. Fuck that so much.

Don't fucking go unless you were popular in high school. If you were popular then, you still are and YOUR reunion will be great. If you weren't popular then? You still aren't and your reunion will find you getting drunk and smoking even though you quit years earlier, and leaving after an hour because of those mean, hateful, nasty pieces of shit sonsabitches who are EXACTLY the same. Nobody changes. No. Fucking. Body. Changes.

Hey, hey, yeah, all you assholes who made fun of me? I hope you get scabies and rickets and shingles and shin splints and hemorrhoids and rheumatoid arthritis and leprosy but most of all I truly hope that someday someone will treat you the way you treated me. Actually, I hope that you have kids and that they are treated the way you treated me so you can understand the pain.

FUCK REUNIONS! FUCK HIGH SCHOOL, AND FUCK ALL THOSE FUCKING FUCKERS WHO MADE MY LIFE A LIVING FUCKING HELL!

GodDAMN, but I hated high school. DeSoto High School in DeSoto, Texas, you can suck it. I hope you burn to the ground.

Stacey and Courtney and Kirk and Shane and Perry and Stacy and Missy and all you smegma drenched taints who taunted me and teased me and made me want to kill myself? Die. All of you. In a fire. Oh wait, turns out Missy did die. Ooops, sorry. No, not really. Hahahahahaaa! I'm not sad.

There is not enough wine in the world to make the memories of high school and the one reunion I went to disappear. Hate. Hate. Hate. HATE!!!

Jesus Christ! Where'd I put the Xanax?

I didn't care for high school. You may have noticed.

Ever wonder what the reunion would be like for the characters of some of our coming-of-age movies?

Like, did Samantha Baker and Jake Ryan get divorced, did the Geek become CEO of his own computer start-up. Did Spicoli get fat after retiring from the circuit? Is Morgan still with Frankie, did Nick get out of jail after serving time for that attempted murder thing, does he still hang out with Panchito Gomez?

These are the things I would like to know.

My ten year high school reunion will be next year, and I think I will go. My high school experience was just fine. Not awesome or horrible, just fine. I am curious to see what some of my classmates are like now. I went to my college's five year reunion a few months ago, and I actually had a good time catching up with friends and professors I hadn't seen in a while.

My life has taken unusual twists from where I thought I would be. Instead of getting my PhD in literature and teaching college courses, I got my MAT and teach high school English. Instead of remaining single, I got married at 22. Instead of moving out of state, I moved to Scotland and then Brazil before returning to Atlanta. My life so far has not turned out the way I expected it to, but I truly enjoy my job, love my husband, and like living in a mid-sized city. I no longer feel the need to prove my intelligence and success, which is probably more than some of my former classmates can say.

My high school that I transferred to for two years (small private school from somewhat bigger public school) has an alumni dinner every January. Kind of like a built in reunion. Though this October is the Centennial Celebration of the school so I'm going to that. Same old, probably a few kids from my class will show up, as will a few from the years before and after me. Hopefully one of those will be the guy I had a crush on when I was senior and he was a junior and jumpin his bones has always been in the back of my mind...you know how it is....

kate the great That is so fabulous, good for you!!

Well, my high school sweetheart and I had a messy and protracted breakup two years later-to give you an example, she apparently thought it was okay to call me to bail her new, secret boyfriend out of jail. So, at the ten year reunion, I was eager to see what had happened. Unfortunately her story was boring and banal. Her husband was a mortage broker (it was 1998) and they were all excited about their 3rd(!) kid. I was voted most changed since high school, which is an insult one way or the other, right? Anyway, the 20th reunion was even less interesting. She didn't show up to that one, which I hope means she's living in a van down by the river. Not that I'm at all bitter.

Unless especially dire circumstances were endured, it seems that the older people get, the less of a sign of precocious sagacity and depth it is to continue to vehemently hate high school. Seems anathema to me to cynically trumpet your triumph over the *provincial turpitude* in which you secretly need to see your clasmmates wallow. Then again, I've had a lot of therapy--can't say that it's worked. The main reason to attend these events is probably to see who's dead, sagging, who is poor and who's expanding. But, drat! It's rarely the 'right' people, or all of them. Another reminder that poetic justice IS just a figure of fiction, and 'good things must happen to good people' is a pretty unsophisticated view of life. I don't know, my view is skewed, coming from a family in which I'm the youngest member by a wide margin. I remember talking to one of my sisters earlier this month and her shaking her head and chuckling that to this day, it's sometimes so strange for her to imagine that she knows someone who was born in my decade.

High school was rough, but not really for the expected reasons. Hand to God, one of my more pleasant memories from the era was of having four of my teeth pulled--because it got people to leave me alone for a while. Nice. Until I got majorly sick from it being botched, but then too, left in peace. Nice. That hit and run two years later kind of took it over the line. You don't a Crappy Birthday until you've languished in an Ontarian emergency room, because 'emergency' means something very different in Canada. Anyway, the regular adolescent concerns--unrequited this and so on, were there as well and in no mean amount, but the other fish were inordinately bigger, so I told myself that the more petty trials were just that--sophomoric (so to speak-although we just call it 'grade ten' here). I'd be surprised if that weren't the case for a lot of people posting here (or not). Studious types with an eye on the door? Judging from I read here, I'd bet there were more than a few. High school was rough, yes, but it doesn't occupy as much of my mind space because I then had more of a sense of being on some sort of almost divinely-ordained upward trajectory (as yet unfulfilled). While day-to-day experiences were frequently negative, I still had an optimism about the future that I stubbornly employed to put my blinders up by day, causing such a weariness by the time night fell that unmanageable extended bouts of introspection could be avoided often enough. So for that reason, I guess, I just never had the energy to actively hate high school with great specificity. I went through the motions, intending to get the diploma and knowing that, ultimately, tha was all I really wanted out of the experience. Unfortunately, I kept up that attitude for far too long, and what works when you're fourteen doesn't do for much longer beyond that.

And beyond that, I have nothing of value to add to this thread, as I'm still too young to attempt to muse on the ephemerality of youth without looking like a complete jackass. I get the joy of looking like a jackass in a myriad of ways on myriad other occasions, so I'll take a rest from that today. High school wasn't long enough ago for me to make any grand pronouncements on its follies or what-have-you, so at this point: I have more education and less money, weaker health and a bigger bed, lost-out chances and won't-go memories, more boredom, but less fear for my safety, the utter abandonment of hope of a growth spurt and a G-cup (and perpetually sore back).

Thar ye be.

I hated school, though I came to accept that I was part of the issue. Unrecognized Aspergers makes you a difficult prospect for your peers, especially when they themselves are struggling to work out the same social rules. While I'm not particularly severe (much less so now), put it this way: all teenagers feel like actors without a script, but most know how to improvise. I needed that fucking script and froze without it.

Having said that, I also attended a school chock full of insular, self-absorbed materialistic upper middle class brats, at least some of whom have remained that way. While I spent a lot of time solely blaming them for my misery, the truth is, they were not all that different to any other large group of humans shoved together against their will: some heroes, some arseholes and a whole bunch of folks in between just trying to find their way in life.

But time and experience have a funny way of knocking off the rough edges and I have actually find catching up with old faces kinda fun. Our 20 year reunion was supposed to be earlier this year but despite all good intentions, the organization was a little haphazard and it fell apart. Shame really- I wasn't looking to renew life long acquaintances, but it's often interesting to look at old relationships in new ways.

My ten year reunion will be next year, and I'm undecided as to whether or not I'll go. I was neither popular, nor unpopular. I was chubby, and quiet, and mostly I stayed well under everybody's radar. I didn't get bullied, I got ignored. Never in my life would I have thought 10 years later I'd be getting married to a handsome, witty Scotsman, finishing my PhD, and nearly 80 lbs. lighter than I was when I graduated. I'm guessing nobody would ever have imagined this future for me, but I'm also guessing that the majority of people I went to High School with haven't spent one second imagining my future. Can you exalt in your present situation when nobody remembers your past? Does it still feel good to be doing better than people who were more popular than you when none of them knew who you were in the first place? A hollow victory, I'd say.

Oh yeah, actual question: not really where I thought I'd be in ten years as far as high school goes, but doing ok with it. I already know that some people from both high school and college are ridiculously successful and/or doing more interesting things than I am (as I suspected there would be -- the schools I went to were academically competitive), and that even if what they do is really different from their original tracks in school, from what I've seen or heard, many of their general personality traits remain the same: modest or enthusiastic or inquisitive or creative, or name-droppers or social climbers. But it really hasn't been too long since then, either.

I'm kinda glad i have no highschool reunion to go to. i would probably be bitter and sarcastic and get drunk at it then verabally accost people. and they wouldn't deserve it, regardless of who they were or who they became.

Yeah. I did a bit of that, but oddly, it didn't really seem to alienate people. I did it while smiling. I said "It was a long time ago, we've grown up, we've changed, but you were horrible to me, and we were not friends. Ya'll seem ok now, though." And then I hugged them. It was oddly cathartic.

Overall, my ten year reunion was a complete blast, but I found some morbid amusement from one bummer comment someone (my fifth grade crush) made to me after I told her - admittedly probably in my characteristic self-deprecating way - how I had more or less done absolutely nothing with my life, that I had bummed around for the past decade, and that I was currently unemployed with no prospects or goals.

"Oh. I always thought that you would be doing something great."

"Nope," I assured her.

The conversation ended awkwardly and abruptly.

I can't wait to go to the twentieth reunion and tell her that my progress report remains the same.

I never really liked High School too much. I always thought I might have gone to my tenth...until I got the invite that informed that it would $45...and a cash bar on top of that. Oh and the bar would only have beer...and the food would be "finger snacks" whatever the fuck that meant.

I didn't really care about going back since I had already had my best revenge. As soon as I graduated high school, I walked into the nearest recruiting office to get the fuck out of my shitty home town. I was gone for three years by the time my folks finally talked me into visiting. I end up getting lunch with my folks and who do I see busing the table next to us...this piece of shit that beat the hell out of me with two of his friends in middle school. I ended up getting suspended for two weeks for getting an arm and leg broken. Never got a straight answer on what the fuck I did to deserve it. Just knowing that piece of shit was still in town...working as a fucking busboy...oh that was sweet. Hell, I didn't even feel like crushing his skull after seeing how fucking pathetic his life was.

(Note: I recognize that Busboys are extremely hard working people. But seeing the "star" local football player, whom it was always rumored that he got away with numerous sexual assaults in high school, now working with a big old gut and a balding head at 22 was so validating.)

DeSoto High Can Bite My ASS

Wow, you went to DeSoto? No wonder you had a suck-ass time, because I went to... :drumroll:

DUNCANVILLE!!!
DUN-CAN-VILLE!!!

(for those of you a little out the loop, Duncanville and DeSoto were huge rivals [at least, when I went])

I graduated in 2001 and our reunion is coming up next year - totally gonna go. Our high school was way too massive in size and numbers to have these cool kids/jock kids/outcast groups. They could be found, but there was no animosity like that - I totally canNOT relate to most of the comments I've seen so far.

No matter what 'category' we may have found ourselves in, most kids at my school were pretty cool people, and Facebook has confirmed that. Some of us are in Cali now, a good chunk live in NYC, and at least half are still in the metroplex married with children. I'd love to party with them, the conservative, Obama-hating bible thumpers too!

When I graduated, I thought that I would be working for Pixar with my name in the credits, married with at least one child by now.

FUCK MARRIAGE!! I'm gonna foster one day. And I'm now a performance artist/conceptual photographer/bartender bum living in a back-house in LA, and I'll have it no other way...

I missed both 10-year reunions (I moved my senior year of high school so I got invites to both schools' reunions) because I was heavily pregnant and about to move overseas. Heavily pregnant is not so impressive--some of the girls had been that a few times already, but it was satisfying to say, "Sorry, I don't have time to come to the reunion because I'm about to move to Europe." I probably still wouldn't come across as a huge success if I showed up at a reunion. I was voted "Most Likely to Succeed" back then but all I've done is get married to a successful man and I'm his fucking housewife. But hey, at least one of us is successful and it sure beats the hell out of an office job (in my lazy ass's opinion).

Anyway, I suppose my 20-year reunions are coming up in a couple years (God I feel old) and I doubt we'll go. We live on the east coast now and I have no burning desire to travel all the way to Oklahoma or Texas just for that crap.

I lived in a large city in Connecticut where everyone was trying to out-WASP and -JAP each other. There were a lot of exaggerated eye rolls over the years... I have no desire to talk to some any of the people I graduated with.

They tried to organize a 5-year reunion last year and from what I heard it was a complete disaster. One girl who never left home and dropped out of community college organized some get together at a local seedy bar and made everyone pay an outrageous 'all you can drink' price for an hour. $45 for ONE HOUR. Damn, B, I know we have rich parents and all but that's a little steep. Apparently two ghetto girls got in a fight with the condescending cokehead heiresses and the police were called. I'm almost sad I missed it.

I can't imagine how much better the 10-year will be. I'm having a vision: Liz Lemon's Whitehaven disaster. If only I could find my own Larry Braverman.

Pookie: man that was an easy score I can't believe you couldn't capitalize on it.

Sarahcat: I always knew I would go out like that, bring it, I'm ready.

DeSoto I grew up in suburban Dallas, too.

But seriously, wait until the 20th reunion. People really ARE very different. And they totally will surprise you. Also, if the ones who were really horrible to you are living a loser life (there's a good chance they are), you can laugh and point and gloat and it'll be awesome.

I think my high school senior self imagined that 10 years after graduation I would be married with children, living in New England and writing for a living. In reality, I'm single, no kids, living in Georgia and teaching for a living.
I haven't been to any of my reunions. Not because of any hatred or bad feelings. Just because the reunion committee always plans them for the weekend before Thanksgiving and that weekend has never worked for me.
I did see the 20th reunion pictures posted on Facebook, though, and was shocked at how old and fat nearly everyone looked.

“When you graduated from high school and/or college did you have any thoughts as to what you all (your classmates, teachers and yourself included) would be like ten years from now?

Out of High School I had a pretty clear idea where I'd be in 10 years - Graduate degree or two. Doing applied research in the hard sciences if I was good enough, with no doubts that I was. (Ah, youth.) Secure & stable, at arms' length from most of the worlds travails, with room for my hobbies and avocations.

It didn't work out even a little bit like that. More like "opposite life" item by item.

I haven't been to a reunion, but there was one for my high school class last year, an - um - somewhat more than tenth. Somebody got the idea that - literally - if we were going to ever get together, best to do it now before too many of us died off.

Oh, the drama. There were cliques instantly formed. An attempt at a mailing list & organization. Secret meetings by folks not pleased with how the folks doing the organizing were doing the organizing. Accusations of absconding with deposit money. Counter accusations of profiteering in the selection of venue.

It was all very delicious from way the hell far away with no intention of attending. Rumor has it that there was enough drunk and disorderly at the event to summon both fights and cops to the hosting resort. It is a formerly rural, mountain resort area, which creates its own strange culture. We had West Side Story at my HS (or Romeo & Juliette if you prefer) complete with threats, beatings & state cops with shot guns on the roof at graduation, to "keep the peace."

The reunion from what I heard was Springstein's "Glory Days" for most of these people who went.

I imagine that coming of age, with peeps, into a world where you could find and make your way could be poignant, leading to lifetime associations and nostalgia. High School was The Hellmouth for me - the articles written after the Columbine shootings as well as the Whedon metaphor. Plus wracking financial instability that propagated into my life at least 10 years thereafter.

While things didn't work out as planned for me, post HS, I've packed more adventures into my time than any 3 of the folks who ignored me in a corner, when they weren't beating me up & calling me "faggot" with no idea what that meant. That is, when I wasn't working at the failing family business. In High School. Or holding my mother as she cried because she didn't understand what my dad was doing, how he could be acting that way. At age 14. (Me, not her. That would have been something, wouldn't it?) until when I left "home".

Off at The Hellmouth, I was called a "faggot" every day since Jr. high, because I was, well, a year later than most hormonally, nerdy, thin, badly dressed, bookish, etc. etc. Of course there wasn't a girl that would look at me. Meanwhile I'm holding my mother while she cries / cried. (Paging Dr. Freud.) Looking back now, I was working with my hands the whole time - shoveling snow, landscaping, light construction, etc. I had to be in pretty good shape, so WTF with the faggoty-wimp thing?

During my high school years, "high school" was the least of it, for me.

BUT, high school got its licks in. They tried to teach a little diversity in "health" class. The poor just out of college gym teacher was trying to get a discussion going about homosexuality. I let her hang there, then apologized privately. "I'm sorry I didn't help out in the discussion. I saw you looking my way, and of course I'm one who speaks up in class. The thing is, they've called me a 'faggot' pretty much since I moved here. They've just let up this year. It's selfish, but I'm not going to give them any reason to start up again."

And she *got it.*

I'd have probably been a suicide without band & music. In any case it's only dumb luck that I wasn't wrapped around a tree or similar. And my favorite-ish teacher, the one I was most like in temperament and talents, well he *was* a suicide before I was out of college.

I'm back in that part of the world part-time now, through my father's cancer & now with mom afterwards. (Paging Dr. Freud, some more.) So, I'm running into people from "back in the day." The decent folks are still decent. The appropriately crazy are long gone. One guy I was sure was dead turned up "in town" nursing his mother through post-op recovery. The less decent are either making amends or still confused. It turns out jerk-dom doesn't usually pay off forever.

Here's what you will discover, 10 years out from the Hellmouth, and keep discovering as long as you stay engaged with your life - you'll learn what's you and what's the situation around you. That's no small gift. People who *must* go to their 10th, I suspect are still enmeshed in a situation long gone.

But that's just me & my assessment is suspect.

My ten year was last year. It was pretty good. I got to see the three people I was looking forward the most to seeing, and they were just as happy to see me. I'd just gotten a kick-ass job, so I had something to talk about, and my sweet, handsome boyfriend played arm-candy.

Considering I was a quiet, bookish wallflower in high school, I think the thing I was surprised about the most was the number of people that a.) knew my name, and b.) seemed genuinely interested in catching up with me. Including some people I'd judged for being popular who ended up surprising me. One girl who I'd written off as a rich bitch ended up working for a Hatian non-profit. Another ended up working at a farm in New England, and came out of the closet. I'll probably go to my 20th too, just because my family is so scattered that I don't go back to Des Moines too terribly often on holidays -- the usual time to catch up with people.

In terms of my own expectations for where I'd be... I really didn't have a clue when I graduated. I knew I'd do well in college, but my choices didn't really solidify until my junior year, and the profession I ended up picking took most people (including my family) by surprise. I did think I'd be married with kids before I turned 30, and that only has a few more months to happen, so my guy better MOVE. I also thought I'd stay in the Midwest, and that didn't pan out either.

It's interesting... my friends were among the best and brightest in our school -- now one is working for a corporation and earning big bucks, one is currently working shit jobs to pay the bills and is writing a novel, one just decided to become a librarian and is tentatively going back to school after a few years of political campaigning. I don't know what exactly I had in mind for each of them, but they all had endless potential when I knew them, and they didn't leave quite as big a mark as I thought. They all seemed happy enough though.

I had a pretty good high school experience, nothing too bad or good and had a great time at my 10 year. This was long before Facebook and there were some people I really liked that I hoped to see again, and I did. Some things of note:

People really haven't changed all that much 10 years out and most have turned out just as you'd imagine.

All the bitchy girls had turned into that suburban wife mold that anyone can probably immediately picture in their head. They all stayed pretty good looking, in a very generic and predictable way.

The popular guys were a bunch of dipshits, and many had gotten fat. One guy had listed himself on Classmates (the only thing we had to keep up on such things at the time) as having got his PhD. I was genuinely surprised because I would never have imaged him doing that, so I asked him about it at the reunion. He said that one of his dipshit friends from high school, who he's still close to (because they all are), filled out his profile as a joke. He's actually in real estate. Loser.

I got high with my best friend from grade school, who crashed the party without paying the dues. I was thrilled to see her and that was a highlight.

One of the formerly athletic chicks was very paranoid about people thinking she was gay, and kept pointing out how she so totally wasn't. Uh, right.

My husband and I were among the 15-20 people who closed the party/bar down. And there was a fight at the end, which really ended the evening with a cherry on top.

I do plan on going to my 20th. I think it will be a lot of fun.

Jesus Christ, Desoto. Calm down.
I skipped my 5 year, 10 year, and if they have a 15 year in 2011 I'll be skipping that, too.
I didn't enjoy high school...but that's not really why I won't go to reunions. I was one of those people who wasn't in a group...I had a few close friends but my graduating class was arguably one of the cliquiest (is that a word?) I've ever seen. Even my sis, one class behind me, still tells me to this day how horrible the people in my class were.
I was one of the kids from the working class town...not the swanky middle-upper class neighborhoods, and because I didn't kiss ass with the "popular" kids, I wasn't a popular kid myself. I didn't fit in with the "nerds" either...they were just as cliquey, to be honest. It was that crowd that spawned my enemy...a former friend who was so insecure and needy that he one day turned on me and did what he could for the next 3 years to make my life a living hell.
So I participated in the activities I liked, hung with my few close friends, and got the hell out of there.
The reason I won't attend reunions is not because I didn't enjoy the people I went to high school with. I'm sure some of the ones I wasn't close to would be friendly enough, and the evening may even be pleasant. The reason I won't attend is because I just don't care. My life is pretty good, and the people in it are rad. I don't need to prove anything, and I'm not interested enough to be curious to see what others are doing. I didn't care about them then...and I don't now. I wish them well...from a distance.

I didn't find out about my 10-year reunion until a few years after it happened, but I found a website with pictures, & it looked pretty pathetic. I think they got a small conference room at a Marriott or something, overcharged for a weak bar, & it looked like the same 10 people were in each photograph. I saw a couple of bitches, this girl Jen who I still want to make out with (turns out we live in the same suburb, & she really blew up, but still), & the guy who got his shite together & flew up from Florida to show off his career & his hot-ass, hot-weather girlfriend. Good for you Jerome, you did it.

Darth Corleone You mean posting on AICN doesn't constitute "doing something great"? Cripes.

Not to hijack this thread, but, One quick note to the person asking about carpal tunnel. If you're having problems with any sort of pain in your limbs, the entire muscle balance of your body comes into play. Over time, your muscles become imbalanced if you have allignment problems. Instead of working together, they begin to work against each other because your back is not lined up straight. Did you ever try this? you can test if you have a muscle imbalance problem by looking in the mirror at your hips. Are they completely even? What about your shoulders? Is one shoulder higher? Ensure you are totally relaxed while standing there. If you see any unevenness, this could be one of the root issues of your pain. Fixing these muscle imbalances can do wonders to eliminate your problems. You've got to fix these issues if you want a permanent solution.

Not to hijack this thread, but, a quick note to the earlier poster who asked about carpal tunnel. If you're having problems with any sort of pain in your limbs, the whole muscle balance of your body comes into play. Through the years, your muscles become imbalanced if you have allignment problems. Instead of working together, they begin to work against each other because your back is not properly aligned. Try this: you can determine if you have a muscle imbalance issue by looking in the mirror at your hips. Are they uneven at all? What about your shoulders? Is one shoulder lower? Make sure you are calm while doing this. If you see any unevenness, this is likely one of the root issues of your pain. Correcting these muscle imbalances can do wonders to eliminate your problems. You've got to correct these issues if you want a permanent solution.

Congratulation to you guys! Enjoy the reunion!