Reunions - do I attend or not?

          In general, people tend to be excited about reunions of any kind - clan reunion, class reunion, etc.  But I have been thinking that may be this is not what all people think.  I know people who would say yes when asked to attend one but does not appear on the very day and there are people who explicitly detest reunions. Are there as many opinions on reunions as there are people? I hope not.  But maybe there are categories.
          For sure, people who are very successful look forward to attending reunions.  This is a given.  For why would he forego flaunting his material wealth or perhaps academic achievement.  In this case, material success seems to win by a far margin.  Ladies who married into riches may well belong to this category.   And why would a failure want to go to a group of enviable, successful high school or college classmates just to be reminded about how unlucky he was.  But those whose career is marketing might see this as an opportunity to sell all those 'dons' and 'doñas' goods or insurance or whatever.  But I do know of somebody who did not amount to anything and yet so cheerfully enjoys all this reunions to the extent of organizing small ones.Maybe he is just a good-natured guy or perhaps he enjoys free drinks and meals every now and then (this is the condescending me speaking).  Failures who have successful children feel that their failure has been wiped off forever.  I agree that success is not only the things that you yourself achieved but also how you raised successful children.  But I have no high regards for reunions with the children attending.  You know why?  Because the children would be the theme and focus of all conversations; they would steal the spotlight, so to speak. from those people who are the genuine focus of reunions.
          But what about the single people vs the 'happily' married ones?  Do single people feel uncomfortable attending reunions?  Single people are of different kinds.  There are those who have stayed single all of their lives and these people are very much able to muster courage to face ex-classmates and be able to answer questions of why they have stayed single all this time while at the back of his mind that everybody thinks he or she might be gay.  Or that she is a single mother, and this is a lot tougher to a very judgemental society like ours.  The other kind are those that have been separated or divorced somewhere else.  Definitely, those that belong to this group are attendees to reunions.  This is because our society values the adage of 'it is better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all'.  But conversations with them are heavily weighed on philosophical rationalizations of difficult relationships without giving any direct hint about their own specific cases.  There is a tendency that his case might be the topic creating the much needed attention to himself.  To the ladies who are separated, this is a taboo topic, and all kinds of brushing aside will be demonstrated.  But people who are genuinely interested may pry into the specifics, feeling that the 30 years or more since they saw each other were just days ago that close friendship still exists and that the sanctity of privacy could be waived for the mean time.
          This does not mean that reunions are not valuable social interactions.  They are indeed to my opinion.  And also the stereotypes I imagined may not fit exactly any kind - they may overlap or perhaps altogether disproven. It all depends on who and what character one has.  So let us all do it and enjoy reunions.