Reunions

[sdelmonte]

So I've been thinking about this...

This month is 20 years since I graduated from high school. Let's ignore the usual comments that time has passed and so forth. Obviously it has.

What I've been pondering is that there is not be any reunion, AFAIK, of the class of 1986 of Yeshiva University High Scool for Boys. Indeed, a perusal of the websites associated with YU and its high school show no evidence that there is even such thing as an alumni association for the high school. Now, I know there is one because once a year, I get a mailing inviting me to a fundraising dinner. But otherwise, nothing. Nothing to link me with the school as it is now or as it was.

I get the sense that in most of this nation, the high school reunion is common. That once you reach your tenth anniversary of graduating, there will be some kind of event. That it's also common to revel in high school years. That you are supposed to feel a link with the school years later. And yet my high school aids in none of the above.

No, I am not desperate to see my classmates. And I don't revere my high school days very much at all. I just find it so odd my school has no office for such things, no desire to stay linked to me.

For the record, YU's college, which I also attended, is not much better. I asks for money often, but it doesn't hold reunions prior to the 25th anniversary. I think that YU sees me only a way to make money, and not as an actual former student.

The funny thing is that I have no contact at all with anyone I went to school with. Not even causally. It doesn't bother me much, but given how small the modern Orthodox Jewish community is, it seems weird that I never see anyone from that part of my life even in a kosher restaurant or at a wedding. So there is a part of me that wonders what happened to these people (most of whom where not friends), and wonders why I don't get offered the chance by the school or an alunmi committee to find out.

That said, I am not sure how much I'd enjoy a reunion with people I didn't like with whom I have even less in common now than then. I just find the whole thing weird.

So I ask you out there...if you are old enough, have your high schools had reunions? If so, did you attend? And do you still have friends from that age?

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

High school and college reunions are two different animals.

I attended Hunter College High School, and we've had reunions every five years. It's always the same weekend, because the individual classes have events on Saturday and then the school sponsors a gathering of every class on Sunday. We've been lucky to have members of my class willing to step up each year and organize the Saturday event; I've heard some classes fall down on the job and never have an event.

I've been to my 5th, 10th, and 15th. I still have a few close friends from the class, whom I stay in touch with. Most of the rest I don't see except at reunions, although we do have an email list. Of the three, the 10th was the most popular.

The Sunday event, interestingly enough, only draws a handful of people from the class. We'll have clost to a hundred or more (out of a class of 200) at the Saturday, class-only event, and maybe 10-15 members of the class will show up on Sunday. Of course, given that most of the other classes have been older women from the time Hunter was an all-girls school, and the fact that they have literally hissed at the younger men in their presence...well, it makes me uncomfortable, at least.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

I attended my 15th HS reunion a couple of years ago. It was interesting to see people again, and who's still cute and who hasn't moved away from the tiny town we all grew up in, and besides that it gave me a good excuse to visit my mother.

I do still have a couple of friends from high school. Shannon, who was one of my cloeest female friends at a time I didn't have many, still IMs me from tiem to time. And of course, hejira2006, who is a year younger than me and was thus one class behind me graduating, is still one of my closest friends to this day.

I was disappointed when the reunion came up that I was only able to bring one of my girlfriends along with me. I'm amused at the notion of showing up at the next one with two or three. :)

[aberrantangels]

My high school had a 10th reunion, but I didn't go because those days were bad enough the first time. The only friend from those days with whom I'm still in any particular touch is harmfulguy, and I'm not sure he notices.

[kmelion.livejournal.com]

My HS graduating class had a 10th reunion, which I did not attend since I had already moved to Israel by then.

Last year, the HS celebrated it's 25th anniversary and we had a "HS Alum who moved to Israel Reunion". Three other 'girls' from my graduating class had moved to Israel. All in all, I think we had 50 women from 10 graduating classes.

I am still in contact with a few women (although I still think of them as girls :)), one I've known since pre-school and another since 2nd grade, and we graduated high school together. I hope to come into NY for Sukkot, since one of them is making her Bechor's Bar Mitzvah.

My sister has a few of my former classmates son's in her sons' grades...

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

My high school hasn't really done class reunions. At least, my class hasn't.

My college does reunions, but since my friends were from all over the classes I was in, I don't see reunions as being overly helpful for seeing people I was friendly with while I was there.

[doeeyedbunny.livejournal.com]

Frisch doesn;t have official reunions. Any class reunion that happens is because some alumnus / alumna has way too much nostalgia and/or time on their hands.
My class did not have a 10 yr reunion. I wanted there to be one so that I could refuse to go.

[figmo.livejournal.com]

The school where I attended high school (Moorestown Friends School (http://www.mfriends.org)) has an annual dinner where they invite alumni to attend (and give money). They take group photos of the alumni whose classes are having five-year-interval reunions (5th, 10th, etc.) and put them in the alumni newsletter.

Because it's such a money-sucking thing, most of my classmates don't go to it. Instead, they had their second "offsite reunion" where they got together at one gal's house at the beach with their families. As one former classmate put it, "We guarantee you won't be hit up for money at this. As for the event at the school, we make no such promises."

OTOH, given how well I was treated when I was in high school, I have zero desire to spend the $$$ to fly thousands of miles to be a scapegoat all over again. I did attend a San Francisco-based alumni gathering a few years ago mostly because my lacrosse coach (and the only teacher who came up to me and congratulated me at graduation) was going to be there. I felt severely out of place with the people there; only two of them had been at the school the same time I'd been there (the host was three years ahead of me; there was one gal who was two years behind me). The gal two years behind me clung to me because I was the only person besides Miss Brudon that she knew there, but even she and I had very little common ground.

As for my classmates, I had little in common with them when I was in school, and I have even less in common with them now.

[dimloep-suum.livejournal.com]

I think my high school might actually start the reunions at five years, so I'll keep an eye open in '08, though I doubt I'll attend if we have one that year.

Graduates of my high school tend to have very strong ties to the school, and them to us to some extent. But then, I've heard we Catholics are kinda weird sometimes. ;)

As for college reunions...*twitchtwitch* I have no desire to be anywhere near such an event.

[happyfunpaul.livejournal.com]

Belmont High School (MA) (class of '86):

5th (1991, when I was in grad school at U. Michigan): There was one. I had a lovely Thanksgiving with then-girlfriend and friends in Chicago, instead of bothering with the reunion.

10th (1996, when I was still in Ann Arbor): There was one. I would've gone. I'd asked my mom to call up the school and find out fi there was one, but she falsely told me there wasn't, so I missed it.

15th (2001, by which time I lived in Boston again): There wasn't one.

20th: Would be this year. I haven't heard anything. Presumably it'll be over Thanksgiving weekend if it happens.

I have fallen out of touch with all but one of my high school friends, but there are a bunch of folks I'd love to see again, even though my life sucks right now.

U. Chicago (class of 1990):

5th (1995, when I lived in Ann Arbor): Went. It was OK.

10th and 15th (2000 and 2005, when I lived in Boston): Skipped.

I keep in good touch with quite a lot of friends from Chicago, both actual classmates and others. Some live in Boston.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

We had one for our 10th, and I went. It was fun, in a low key way, to see who'd changed dramatically and who hadn't changed at all. But I had a couple of people I'm still friends with to hang out with, and a time-shared date who found the whole thing hilarious.

I still have one close friend from high school, and one distant but fond friend from first grade. Other than that, I don't actively keep in touch with anyone, though I'm pleased enough to run into some of them when I visit my mother.

[zellion.livejournal.com]

Wow, I didn't peg you as that old when I met ya' last fall.

[ljcygnet.livejournal.com]

I found out through the grapevine a few years back that my HS was having a ten year reunion but I never got an invite. (Other people got cards in the mail -- multiple cards. And e-mails if they are on classmates.com, which I am.)

I wasn't surprised. I was wildly unpopular; I was the kid the other kids loved to torment and bully. I remember the rich girls actually telling me they didn't want me to attend graduation because "it was for the cool kids and you'll ruin it if you come ..." ... (I went to graduation.)

I'm in the phone book, so it's not like they'd have had a hard time finding me if they wanted to invite me.

I was tempted to show up anyway, just simply because I turned out rather different than I think they thought I would. Plus there's one or two people I'd like to track down and haven't been able to.

But I had better things to do that day than crash my own high school reunion, so oh well ...

Leva