One of the lesser phenomena of the summer is the blossoming of high school reunions. Remember high school? Or are you trying to forget it? I’ve been contacted by one of these companies that hosts online sentimentality about being 18 years old, and tries to organize these events where old classmates get together awkwardly to shuffle their feet and try to have conversation with people they used to be forced to share a room with lots of desks with, and try to reconnect and figure out what the heck everyone is up to now. That could be fun, I’m sure my peers have gone off in all kinds of interesting directions and I wouldn’t mind catching up.
The pressure is particularly high this year because it’s been 50 years. I graduated from Kent-Meridian High School, out there in western Washington state, in 1975, and that’s a nice round number, so of course we have to have a party. Unfortunately, I’m not motivated enough to fly 1500 miles to meet with people I’ve grown away from for so long. Why are we even doing in-person meetings for this purpose when we have technology that would allow us to have those conversations online?
Then I saw that there are two separate reunion events for my class this week. I realized that there are no central organizing principles behind these events — it’s just people stepping forward to host little parties called “reunions”. Hey! I can do that! So I’m creating an online event (like they ought to be) to talk about high school. Everyone is invited!
There are a few obstacles to doing this. I live 1500 miles away from my old high school, and I have no ongoing connections to my former peers. Also, to be fair, I was never one of the popular kids, and I suspect that most of my ex-classmates would say “who?” if my name were mentioned to them. It’s rather bold for one of the uncool, most forgettable students in the class of ’75 to have the affrontery to host a reunion event. I’m doing it anyway. I’m opening the virtual door to anyone who wants to show up and say, “you haven’t changed a bit, man” to some old guy and tell him about your used car lot/insurance business and hand out business cards.
I don’t care if you are a Kent-Meridian alumnus, or when you graduated, or even if you graduated at all. We can have a conversation about standards of public education, or popular ’70s music (we can be sad together about Ozzie Osbourne), or reminisce about antiquity, or whatever. Pester me about anything.
I don’t expect anyone from my high school to show up, and that’s OK.
(It’s really an excuse for a live stream.)
My mom went to her high school class reunions while she was able but she was from a small town and kept in touch with the folks she went to school with anyway. I have never been to a high school or college class reunion. I can’t imagine getting together with those folks even online, assuming any of them are still alive or able to get there. It’ll be 60 years for high school next year.
I’ve been to one, several years ago! It was a blast to see a few of my old friends, but the overwhelming majority of the attendees were people wanted nothing to do with me years ago, and still didn’t have anything in common with me.
My 50th was in 2023. For only the second time, I decided to go to a reunion (the tenth was my first). I had a miserable time. Even though we shared similar experiences from the early 70s, we all had absolutely nothing in common and no clues to how each of our lives had changed. Frankly, everyone was a complete stranger and even though we went to school together, that wasn’t enough of a bond to make me care about their families, careers, travels, etc.. And that was for those I could recognize or cared to talk to in the first place. I left early.
my 40th reunion must be coming up. i have received no info. is that a hint?
I’d like to see a few of those I went to different schools with. But I distinctly remember agreeing with many of them that we were the type who would never go to class reunions.
Off topic, but evolutionary biologist Colin Wright has filed a [white person] racial discrimination suit against Cornell for denying him tenure (which has happened to him at a number of places.)
He seems to have done work on spiders but most of his recent publications seems to be “there are only two immutable sexes, male and female” in nonscience publications
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Y6HdvgcAAAAJ&hl=en
Any thoughts?
My tenth devolved into a fight between the “cool” kids and everyone else. In the end the first group planned something for the week before and only invited a select group. I didn’t go to either, or any after.
Do not dignify Colin Wright with the title “evolutionary biologist”. He is an evolutionary psychologist and an editor at Quillette. He’s just a racist, sexist slug.
Larry @3: yeah, that was pretty much my experience as well including “I left early.” That was a while ago—I was class of ’64.
I haven’t attended any of my reunions. 40th coming up next year (shudder!). I might attend PZ’s streamer. Being an Xer I’m more inclined toward 90s music and would rather forget about the 80s. The 70s were ok, kinda foreshadowing the 90s.
Being an Xer I’m apparent lead exposure challenged, at least as an X-hate Bluesky thread I saw yesterday would have it.
I was lucky to have missed my 50th HS reunion because it was canceled due to the beginning of the Covid lockdown. Not that I intended to go. I had gone to an informal gathering for the 45th anniversary and found that mostly former jocks and cheerleaders were there. And the old cliques were just as strong as ever. I did connect with one guy who’d been one of my best friends from kindergarten through graduation, after which, he’d enlisted in the army and seemingly disappeared until that night. Frankly, I had assumed he may have been killed in Vietnam, like a few of my other friends had, and I was genuinely happy to see him there. But as it turned out, all he wanted to talk about was high school — not exactly the happiest time of my life. We even met for dinner a few months later with spouses in tow and it was still the same old rehashing of the crap I’d been able to outgrow years ago. I tried to make him understand that those weren’t “good times” for me and that I was more interested in catching up on everything we’d missed out on over the last 45 years but he changed the subject back to some story about how we got in trouble for a prank we pulled in sophomore English class. I haven’t heard from him since.
I attend my graduation reunion with all my fellow students every year. I finished my final test, my examiner immediately scored it, said I passed and shook my hand saying “congratulations, you have passed your GED”. I have my reunion each year, inevitably, unbeknownst to me.
Big Boppa @11
Springsteen has a great song about just that called “Glory Days”. He runs into a classmate at a bar so they go into have a few beers. The guy was a star athlete in school and all he would talk about were his glory days then. As The Boss sums it up
Trying to recapture a little of the glory of
Well, the time slips away
Leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of
Glory days
You graduated before punk rock ???
The flat class/income structure in Sweden means there tends to be more cohesion. But as adults spread out all over the country it is hard to keep up with what people are doing.
birgerjohansson @14
I’ve seen Midsommar. Such cohesion is overrated, especially when the youngsters bring college friends to visit from afar.
There was a reunion for pretty much anybody that had gone to my school when it closed down, I didn’t go. The only friend I stayed in touch with for years became somewhat detached from reality and we lost touch. Can’t say I miss any of them.
Oh I forgot, there was a retirement party for the headmaster of my junior school (pre-eleven) at one point. I didn’t go to that either, the man traumatised me in mental arithmetic classes, I didn’t always pay much attention, so when the stentorian voice call my name to solve some long division or multiplication in my head I just froze. Then he’d go on saying my name for what seemed like forever between me making stumbling attempts at whatever the problem was. It wasn’t an effective teaching method.
Larry 13
That pretty much nails it.
Except I didn’t have any close friends from the in-crowd—jocks or otherwise. I was considered a band nerd in HS. And even though I found some minor local success with a rock band after graduation, I doubt anyone from school ever knew that, or would care if they did.
I might seriously consider going to my 50th high-school reunion, but I’d be VERY surprised if anyone who might organize one had my current address, or even remembered my name. I was one of the stoners — a MUCH bigger fraction of my class then than it’s ever been since — so it’s most likely only other stoners would remember me (“Oh yeah, like, you were the biggest dealer in the whole school, man!”).
PZ, you probably aren’t going to have many constructive conversations about popular 70s music if you can’t even spell Ozzy. And Sabbath weren’t even that popular at the time, not given the dominance of pop, disco and punk — even prog rock! — over that period.
Hey Yeah! My 50th is this year too! Shorecrest HS Seattle. Not going, no reason, most of my friends were either the year before or the year after, or in theater – (we were all the freaky outcasts) and a lot of them are dead. Yeesh, weird.
Rich Woods @20
Sabbath were a major influence on heavy metal, allegedly due to Iommi’s serious finger damages and the devil’s note. I wasn’t into them until the early 80s (still their older 70s stuff). I was too young in the 70s. There’s also Rush who weren’t that popular either. What’s popularity got to do with it? If we skip over the embarrassing 80s, Rush reverted back to their heavier 70s sound in the 90s. Pearl Jam is an honorary 70s band as they have that vibe.
In the 70s Van Halen emerged and redefined hard rock. I didn’t realize how long they had been around, playing backyard party gigs. Didn’t Gene Simmons, in the same band Rush would tour with, discover them? We can skip over much of the 80s and the Van Hagar era.
Only a few bands rocked the 80s: Queensryche, Iron Maiden, and Metallica (some of their best stuff). Queensryche went on to do elevator music in the 90s.
For the 70s: Led Zep, Cheap Trick, Pink Floyd, some Styx, Blue Öyster Cult, Heart, Queen, AC/DC (Bon Scott only…full stop), Steve Miller Band, some Steely Dan…not quite 90s level music but still good. Better than the 80s!
I overlooked that Judas Priest put The “Green Manalishi” out in the 70s and the amazing cover of “Diamonds & Rust” to which Joan Baez said: “I love that! I was so stunned when I first heard it. I thought it was wonderful. It’s very rare for people to cover my songs…” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamonds_%26_Rust_(song)
Well I just learned something. Priest’s “The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown)” was also a cover (of Fleetwood Mac). This version brings a member of ZZ Top (70s icons who also went to crap in the 80s) together with a member of Metallica:
Either my high school wants nothing to do with my class or vice versa, but every time it comes up on a year that would be a x0th or x5th reunion, all the other classes that end in 3 have something and class of ’93 just gets forgotten. Oh well, it’s not like I’d go anyway. :)
I’d only consider going back under these circumstances:
https://youtu.be/Y9iX9ZlQ6cY?si=hFAJiOzNmaiK-WC7&t=160
I escaped far more than I graduated.
I went to two HS reunions. They were so uneventful I honestly had trouble recalling if it was one, or if the details of two were blended together. Memory of the location of the first finally clicked as I wrote this.
I was a quiet nerdy kid so I didn’t expect I would be missed if I didn’t show, but surprisingly I got a lot of pushback about not wanting to attend, especially the second.. including what I’d call a benevolent harassment campaign where my phone number got passed around the day of.
There was one last reunion that I did successfully avoid. I recall the organizer(s) wanted something a bit more adult than meeting at a bar/club. They wanted to book a hall with a $50/per seat dinner. This was maybe a decade ago now, so not exactly cheap for something we didn’t really want to do. I also recall they seemed to get a bit upset when interest turned out to be low.
I will admit, I had a good time at a grammar school reunion about 10-15 years ago. Our class was only about 1/8 the size of high school, and I spent more time with all of them. Nostalgia about actual childhood is also perhaps more fun than being forced to re-live HS with people you only saw in one or two classes .. or maybe even just the hallway. With the segregation of “honors” and “AP” classes in HS.. there were loads of fellow students I never had a class with.
Anyway.. if there’s anything to take from this.. it’s that you may not realize how fondly class mates recall you if you were a generally nice person. I spent a lot of time living in my own head so I didn’t notice at the time.
@8 An evolutionary psychologist? OK, so a clown from the Jordon Peterson knock-off collection of oxymorons.
Are any of his spider papers any good or is he also doing fortune telling using spiders?
I graduated in 1984 and went to one high school reunion. It was nice to see a couple old buddies of mine, but just like high school, everyone was in their cliques. During the event, this one classmate of mine was very drunk and started a scene with me. He was an idiot then and ten years later, still an idiot. I never went back to one ever again.
My memories of high school are mostly memories of a zero tolerance administration during the Bush years.
20th year reunion is next year for me. You couldn’t pay me to go last time, I doubt it will be any different this time.
My wife had her 50th in June. Loudoun Valley HS, VA. They had a great time. A lot of the people in her class had stayed in the area so there was a good turnout and they made a weekend of it. My 50th was canceled by Covid.
If I try hard, I can marshal a tiny flicker of interest, for a moment. I would rather leaf through a stack of dossiers, looking for people who turned out to be decent despite awkward beginnings. OTOH, for elementary school I’d note who’s dead or in prison and think, “finally”.