My high school class is having a reunion in Las Vegas, a city that I have never particularly wanted to see but feel obligated to, as if it’s in the good American Handbook.
Rafe and his wife love it and we were planning on going and then continuing onto Santa Monica/Venice which they’ve never been but have seen so many slide shows of they could recognize entire streets. I’m a compulsive photographer. Once I begin I can’t stop. Digital cameras and I were made for each other especially since I figured out what the “T” stands for on my Nikon.
Though I can write directions, I can’t follow them. It’s part of a problem that I’m 99.9% sure that I have.
Central Audio Processing (CAP or APD) problems might have been known about when I was in school, but it was never tested for. I was always light years ahead of my grade in reading comprehension. While I did poorly in class tests I excelled in standardized tests, except for spatial relations, and math. But I got an 88 on my geometry Regents and in New York if you passed the Regents you passed the course. My average was 58; I didn’t understand a thing. That was my lowest Regents score by far. Well no, did understand that triangles have three sides.
We moved when I was in Seventh Grade, and while I had the social skills necessary, I had panic attacks that abated them. Unfortunately my school went from seventh through twelfth grades.
I made friends and had more friends elsewhere but my memories are more of the first awful three years. Really I never gave most people a chance. I can’t turn back the clock though I would love to redo those years if I could keep most of the years that came later.
My one real girl friend, the class intellectual/artist probably wouldn’t go. Have no idea who I knew well will go. Though everybody knew everybody else as the school was so small.
My one good boy friend, but never boyfriend; one of the most popular boys in school killed himself when we were 23 or 24. I introduced him to his last girlfriend. When we were twenty we sat outside a hippie Jewish frat house in one of the many sound towns our friends lived in.. Couldn’t help myself, I asked him:
“David, why did you take my role? I’m supposed to be mute.”
He laughed, but he didn’t talk much.
His girlfriend broke up with him the next year; while two boys asked me to marry them. I blossomed as he withered. It made me very sad.
David died several years later in the same water we had been sitting in front of.
When I think of my problems I do think of lost potential, but I also think of David and all the people like him who couldn’t make it. It breaks my heart; and the one thing that I have never felt guilty about is the incredible survival mechanism that has enabled me to function so well. I have panic attacks; I do things anyway.
I’m on a small dose of an anti-anxiety medicine; it helps a little. I have tried higher doses and they don’t help anymore than the lesser one. I have tried so many medicines, done so much therapy, been tested so much, I’m resistant to it now.
I feel like a puncushion that has lost all the stuffing it’s been pricked so much and I’m raw. I talk about this because I think it could help people.
If you were me would you go to your high school reunion if it happened to be part of a bigger trip with friends?
Would you go alone to see how people who have remained permanently adolscent in your mind turned out?
Would you skip it?
I have assiduously avoided every attempt to draw me back into that still adolescent world. I get a magazine chronicling the lives of those women I spent my teen-age years with. I had nothing in common with them then; less now. Most still live the sheltered, exclusive lives they were born into. I find that terrifically sad, and don’t want to see it up close. But that’s me. Do you want to go, Pia? Are you curious about anyone or anything? Are there perhaps some scores that need settling? They say success is the best revenge. You are a very successful woman. Is there anyone who needs to see that – someone who dissed you perhaps, way back then?
Going to a reunion can fulfill many wishes. I would say – list your reasons for going. If you cannot come up with anything vital – any threads left hanging that need to be done up – then don’t waste your time. If, on the other hand there is a concern or two that needs addressing – party away! Perhaps going will lift your spirits – add a dash of different in your life. God knows we all need that from time to time.
About your panic attacks – I get ‘em too – so does my best friend. We are each others life-line when they hit. It can help to have someone to talk you down. Sorry to hear they plague you as well. Life is just so complicated at times, wouldn’t you say? God – wouldn’t it be nice if we were all able to take a vacation from ourselves on occasion? Me – I’d like a week pretending to be a tree. I could use the sleep!
You couldn’t pay me enough to go to a Class Reunion. I just see them as places where plastic people show off.
But then, there’s my sister’s class, 10 years prior to mine. So now I must retract my statement because I know she isn’t plastic or a show off.
While I’d never go, I’m sure others enjoy them very much. 🙂
I’m with Jane. My 20th class reunion was held a mile from my office this summer and skipped it. That’s me, though. If it were in Vegas, I might go but skip all the events. Reunions are fun if you can avoid the people.
You couldn’t pay me to go to my high school reunion. I’ve already avoided two. My high school years were the toughest for me as I was picked on often. There isn’t one single person from High School I still keep in touch with.
Yeah, I have to add my voice to the others above me. I skipped teh first high school reunion. There was very little in high school I enjoyed… reliving it doesn’t sound interesting.
Yeah, I may have made something of myself, but why would I need the valuation of those I didn’t care much about to prove that to me?
I do know people that went and had a good time, but it was all about reliving memories and curiosity of how people turned out. I guess I wasn’t curious enough.
I’d go on the trip with friends though. Can never get enough time with good friends.
I’m with Dan. I would go if it were with a trip with friends…there would have to be some sort of escape route for me. I haven’t been to any reunions yet, but keep in touch periodically with a couple of friends from those days. I’ve found out that I’ve got quite an exciting life, in the old high-school rumor mill (much more exciting than reality), so I figure I’ll leave them to wonder what’s happening with me.
The people who mattered in high school, the people who are worth knowing…are still my friends and we’re in touch.
I hate, hate, hate, hate, hated high school. Why would I intentionally put myself in a room with a bunch of people who made me miserable? Seriously.
The past is done and gone.
But, as others have noted, some actually enjoy reunions. [shrugs.]
Skip it.
Have you ever gone to one? I went to my tenth. It was like being at a wedding or Bar Mizvah, only every guest went to High School with me. Sounds almost nightmarish. But my basic takeaway was, been there done that. Each time another reunion looms, my stock answer is, “I went to one already.”
Personally I feel wholly estranged from the “me” of my high school days. When I think back to college, that’s me, but younger. There is some sort of discontinuity once I try to go back further, to HS. Some vital parts of what makes the current me “me” apparently weren’t in place by the end of HS. (Could it be the hallucinogens? Nah…)
I don’t think there are any answers there, any great revelations. Just, “Boy, she got fat, and these guys are awfully bald, and no thank you, I don’t wish to buy any life insurance.” If you go, my money says you split early.
I actually liked high school even though I couldn’t wait to move on. I haven’t been out long enough to vote but I do keep in touch on a semi regular basis with exactly five people and there is a dead journal of sorts where a few others randomly post their lives. I can’t imagine going to a class reunion as from what I hear from the friends that do spend any time at their parents homes,( my parents don’t live there any longer although they maintain our old home), it is nice to see people from school for about five seconds and then they are bored to death dying to actually get home and spend time with their family. People just move on I guess.
The only reason to go would be if you wanted to go to Las Vegas.
unlike most of your readers, who seemed to be pretty miserable in HS, i had a fun time. i was part of the wealthy, popular, drug taking group. i only took honors classes and i only dated pretty boys. that said, i wouldn’t go to a reunion. in college, i changed enough to dislike the person i was in HS, and most of the people i knew. i have kept in touch with those i wanted to keep in touch with. the rest, who cares? of course, i have a few more years until my 10th reunion, but i think my sentiments will remain the same.
do what you feel like doing.
It it were me, I’d probably make the obligatory trip to Vegas, whether I went to the reunion or not. I (think I) was well-liked in high school. Not in any popular groups or anything, though. But I haven’t been to either of my reunions thusfar.
I am suffering from panic attacks, too. They only started a month ago although I have been anxious for years or decades.
I hated high school. I couldn’t care less what all of those people are doing now, and I guarantee you they don’t care about what I’m up to. Still, I’d take any excuse to take a road trip!
Personally, I think I’d bail on the high school reunion. My 10th is coming up; no real desire to go back. Why ruin memories, good or bad, with the often sobering realities? Do you really want to go? If not, bail, hit Santa Monica instead. The PAcific air helped my panic attacks, might help yours as well.
Nah, I haven’t gone to my hell school ooops, I mean high school reunions.
Now, the trip with friends….. I definitely would do!!