Jake’s 50th high school reunion

If my high school did this, I might actually show up to one, just to roll the bones and see if Kelly C. from the class behind mine showed up. Nearly 30 years later and I still kick myself over that missed connection. (She was very smart, as evidenced by the fact she apparently doesn’t have a Facebook account.)

 

She’s married, has 4 kids, and put on 50 pounds after the second pregnancy that she’s never been able to take off.

You’re welcome.

 

Fuck, I put on 25 pounds of sympathy weight with our first and I'm still lugging that shit and a bit more around.

Kids!

 

Grosse Point Blank, Mirror in the Bathroom

 

My father maintains his high school reunion after 60+ years. There aren't many people because of time and moving away. It means something to him, though.

 

The girl I had the biggest crush on in high school called me out of the blue last year, just to make sure she had the right contact info for our 50th next year. I guess I’ll go, but I haven’t been in contact with a single person from my class since our five-year reunion in ‘78, so I’m not sure there’s any interest in catching up now.

 

We had a board with pictures of our deceased
More than anyone was comfortable with
Girl who lived down the street committed suicide
The unrequited love of my life had an irrational fear of doctors, got sick and never told anyone
Her brother broke into her house and found her
Only 63

 

In my class of about 70 people from 1993 we've had seven people die, though we actually haven't lost any now for 10 years. It was a bad first 20 years out of school. Only one from cancer and one in his sleep, otherwise suicides and accidents.

I've only been able to make it to my 25th and had a blast, even though it was held in the barn of a classmate. Nice barn though.

Went to my 25th college reunion few months ago, even though I somehow know...zero people I actually graduated with. Went to junior college and when I transferred I was wrongly classified as a sophomore so put in soph housing. Being a guy who spent his college nights playing tecmo and pickup hoops instead of partying or going to the bars, I didn't expand my social network much. It was great connecting with some folks, though the college has every 5 and 10 year reunion gather together now each summer, so it was a whole bunch of people.

Awesome moment when I started talking with a woman who lives in Miami. Graduated in '97 like me. Didn't know her. Where'd you grow up? Turns out she is from a town my uncle lives in "but before that we lived in this really small town." That town turns out to be the town of 1,200 my parents are from. "But we actually lived on a farm," which turns out to be a farm 2 miles from my grandpa's farm, where I stayed one weekend a month as a kid. Very cool moment--as a Chicago tribute band blared in the background of the picnic--for a present-day New Yorker and Floridian.

 

At one of my wife's early HS reunions LOTS of registration money went missing.

 

I went to mine earlier this summer. It was fantastic. Probably 100-120 of a class of 235 attended. We also had a board of the deceased, more than 20, some more than 40 years ago.

Nobody trying to impress anyone, like at 10 and 20. Lots of talk about grown-up kids, grandkids, retirement plans, etc.

My little hometown (7K) has a specific Reunion Weekend every year (last full weekend of July), and a huge all-class beer party on Friday night and a big sidewalk sale where they shut down Main Street on Saturday afternoon. Plus there is no open-container law so you can carry around a beer from one of the uptown or downtown bars.

Lots of people come home and you can find those in other classes (69-71, 73-75 for me) who you went to school with, played sports with and knew, even though they weren't in your exact graduating class. The bars stay open late and I saw all kinds of people I hadn't seen in forever.

A former soccer teammate put this playlist together of songs from our era, grade school on up. It's pretty solid.

Reunion by john seeger

 

I was working on the "Into The Light" list -- or "Valhalla" list -- for my last reunion (before I quit the committee, long story). We had a class of about 1,000. I had 80 names of deceased classmates. I wondered how many others actually had died. We knew of 80. How many did we not know about who moved away or just disconnected? Some people liked high school, some hated it. I just guessed that the number could be doubled or maybe even tripled. That would be like maybe 200+ out of 1,000. Doesn't seem unreasonable. Most of us were 68 years old for the last reunion (although it was postponed a year because of Covid so most of us were 69).