Went to Cargill for my 20th High School reunion. It was a shared event between SHHS (my school) and the heathens at WDSS. About 40 grads per school plus spouses.
It was way better than I thought it would be. I was concerned I’d just know Steve and the Henrys. So it was even more disconcerting at first when Sonia and I were the 1st ones to arrive from the gang. But it didn’t take long to remember the Lacey’s, the Heaneys, the Kraemers (Lori, Tony), Gordie Schmidt, etc. By the time the gang did show up I hardly spent time with them. Got a chance to hook up with old pals like the Donnelly’s and Paul Seigfried. Some Zettlers and Bajurney’s were there.
Some things I noticed that I’m guessing are common for small town/school reunions:
– the old cliques reform for the most part but there is significant co-mingling since everybody knew everybody back then.
– I’d say about 60-70% of the people still live in the area. I wasn’t surprised to learn about the ones who stayed and the ones who didn’t.
– Most of the guys I could recognize almost immediately. The hairstyles don’t change much with the men. I admit I had to look at the name tags of a couple of guys…but that’s about it.
The girls on the other hand were more difficult to recall. With the updates in fashion, makeup, hairstyles etc. it is easy to see how that could happen. There were a few that I knew on sight, a few that I was able to remember only a few moments into the conversation (and avoid embarassment) and then a lot that I had to ask/look at the nametag. I think that would be a compliment to the ladies but it still feels bad when they come up and know you but you don’t remember them.
The enjoyment of it all was the atmosphere. It was just like being at those highschool dances or more accurrately, those stag&does that happened just at the tail end of school. I was caught up in the atmosphere and for a while I was sent back in time to the glory days. If I had to break down the general conversation it was about 70% “what have you done since school” and 30% “Hey, remember when we trashed Mike Zettler’s car” type conversations. And the 70% catchup stuff was surprisingly nice: I was expecting a battle of ego flavour to the night but that wasn’t even close to what actually transpired.
Well done to the committee who organized this and it would be awesome to see a 25yr or 30yr reunion. Apparently I missed the 10th year reunion but back then I was getting married and had more important things to do 😉