Due to my parents' divorce, I ended up going to high school in a small town (115 in my graduating class) with kids who'd, a few exceptions aside, known each other their whole lives. Factor in my being a quiet kind of guy back then and living out in the boondocks with no convenient way to get to activities led me to having only a pair of close friends but being on nodding acquaintance with most of the rest of them, but when it came to weekend parties and gatherings, I was the guy who was not there. When I graduated, I said bye to, like, four people and took off to the military, never figuring on seeing any of them again aside from my two closest friends. This was 1984, well before the advent of social media.
I got wind of the 5-year reunion, by which time I had grown more sociable and had lost weight and was working out and actually knew what the hell I was doing when it came to women. My sole motivation for wanting to go to the 5-year was to try and hook up with some of the girls I oogled in high school. However, two months before the reunion, I met Mrs. SicOne and my rationale and desire to go to the reunion abated. I also passed over the 10- and 20-year reunions as well, mostly due to work commitments, travel complications (I live 8 hours' drive from my old town), and a real lack of desire to invest a long weekend and $ into an activity that I didn't really think I'd enjoy enough to make the effort worthwhile.
However, by the 25th-year reunion, Facebook had emerged. A page for the reunion was set up, more people got involved, and while I initially didn't really give two shits about the whole thing outside of idle curiosity, I nonetheless began to get reacquainted with many of my old classmates through discussions on the reunion page, their own pages, and messages. Much to my surprise, I discovered that most had changed for the better (much like my own self), things were substantially less cliquey than h.s., and it was actually quite interesting to chat with them within the parameters of FB and see what had transpired in their lives a quarter-of-a-century (gasp!) hence. Some had not progressed in their lives but most had, and even the ones who were still acting like they were back then, well, looking at the circumstances of their lives, I could see why some chose to cling to that or could not escape it. But the majority of the "getting caught up" portion of the reunion was held on FB.
I decided to go to the actual event. And since most of the catching up was done online ahead of time, the awkward 5-minute "What have you been up to the last 25 years?" conversations were mostly precluded and we got down to the business of having a wonderful time. Those who went had a fuckin' great time, those who didn't for the most part regretted not going, and while circumstances led to me calling it a night fairly early, I'm glad I invested the time and money to go.
And regretted not making more of an effort to get to know these fine folks better in high school.
My class was filled with a lot of whiny losers who spent most of their time drinking and partying, and they don't seem to have changed much. I would be shocked if they could actually pull off a reunion.
