Just a few days ago, my twentieth high school reunion came and went. I didn’t attend, though I had intended to at one point.

My father had once advised me that, if I was to attend only one reunion, to make it the twentieth; his reasoning was that twenty years provides a solid interval for personal shakedowns to occur. A mere five years, even ten, perhaps, might still find some people in a state of post-teen flux, unsure of their path and themselves. While there would always be a certain percentage of losers who would never get it together, my father posited that twenty years after graduation was a perfect time to get a snapshot of one’s high school chums; old enough that they would be firmly established as whatever kind of adult they were fated to become, but still far from decrepitude and its warping influence.

With that in mind, I had planned for some years to attend my twentieth reunion. Yet as the fateful year 2006 approached, I became progressively less interested. After all, I’ve only been in regular contact with two people I knew in high school, neither of whom were in my graduating class. My curiosity was nevertheless still piqued; after all, it might have proved interesting, if not outright amusing, to see how some of the class of 1986 had turned out.

My vacillation was ultimately quashed after a couple of visits to Classmates.com, which boasts an impressive and nearly comprehensive list of my former schoolmates. A number of Classmate message boards had been set up earlier in the year to organize the reunion. Of the half-dozen or so people who posted messages, I only dimly recognized a couple of names. Though some posters made some optimistic noise about having the “biggest reunion ever”, this optimism was belied by the paltry number of posts: six. Total. Not exactly a hotbed of enthusiasm and activity.

Dispassionate analysis of the situation yielded the following facts:

• (+) Attending would require a trip down to my beloved hometown of San Diego.
• (-) Tickets to the planned soirée were about $100.
• (-) The online list of likely attendees was slim indeed.
• (-) I didn’t know any of those people.
• (-) I’m already planning a trip to San Diego in July.

The practical upshot, then, was the opportunity to drop $150 on airfare for the privilege of spending some more money on a sterno-heated dinner served in a hotel meeting room hosted by a handful of strangers.

Yep, sounded like big fun, only without the fun. Or even the big. Pass.