Going to a class reunion creates worries for some folks. Will people make childish comparisons of success? Will people revert to the popularity contests? Will people treat others as silly as they did in high school?

Not my class. There’s no reason to worry about those things.

I graduated from Pomeroy High School in 1989. Pomeroy Community School District is, er, was a small school district in Calhoun and Pocahontas counties in Iowa.

Twenty-eight people graduated in the class. Everyone attended the same building from kindergarten to 12th grade. You know you are at a small school when people can list from memory the names of classmates who moved to or away from the school. I came in the middle of third grade.

We were the last of the Cyclones; it was the final year before the sports teams became the Pomeroy-Palmer Knights. Any records our class broke were stored or perhaps erased because the new school district started with a new slate of records.

That might be a good thing though because our class even in high school wasn’t that judgmental about success. Sure, it was good to be successful — an Iowa report back in the day found our school’s students over a set period of years to perform the best at the ACT — but happiness mattered too, it seemed. What good is success if you aren’t happy?

Our class led a winless football team (blame the coach). We had a moderately good basketball team that did win the conference tourney (credit the coach), but previous classes for two years had gone to state. Our school had 15 years in a row of top ratings at band contest until we were seniors (don’t fault the teacher; this failure was squarely ours). The list goes on. We laugh about it, but the secret is we were fairly good at academics (credit the teachers and parents). You could probably accuse us of being too well-rounded. We were fair at a lot of things, rather than being outstanding at one or two.

But while some classes had big rivalries over sports or academics or both, we were a party class. Yup, that’s about the easiest way to put it.

In fact, there’s an upside. You could credit our class for lightening the way freshmen were treated. We didn’t haze them as harshly as had been the longtime school tradition. We weren’t supposed to admit it being big, tough seniors and all, but we were kind of nice.

So it was interesting Friday night at the Starlite Village Best Western in Fort Dodge, Iowa, to see 19 of the 28. Yes, our town is so small we have class reunions in a different town. Everyone seems to be doing rather well, from the physician to the stay-at-home mom. No one really talked much or asked much about work, though. Mostly, we talked about location, children, spouses and “whatever happened to?” “remember when?” “have you tried?” and “have you been to?” sort of chat. Some live in our hometown. Some live as far away as Arizona. Some have stayed put. Some have lived abroad. We all have had adventures.

Twenty years later, the reunion organizers found everyone, largely thanks to Facebook, and everyone still is alive. We were a party class, but, like I said, happiness matters, so it’s not like we burned the town down or anything too troublesome. I say it was a party class, but I wouldn’t say it was a party-hardy class. We didn’t get in much trouble with the law, but we did get in a lot of trouble with the vocal-music teacher in eighth grade. Our smart-mouth humor probably caused the most anxiety for teachers, and as a result we now swap tales of when teachers struck students with their hands, basketballs or erasers.

Still, people in our class had a good sense of humor and a good sense of when to turn in for the night. That was the case Friday. After a social hour, a buffet dinner, a round of “Jeopardy”-style questions about our class, and more catching up over photos and videos, everyone turned in. No one stayed up until some ungodly hour. Many were present for the continental breakfast the next morning.

I’m glad I went. I skipped the 10-year reunion because I was in Texas and the timing was difficult. Even though it was 20 years ago, classmates instantly connect again as if the last time we saw each other was yesterday. Everyone is older, but we more or less are the same people we were back then. Oh, sure, not the same, older and all, but, you know, the same humor, the same smiles, the same traits and demeanors. There’s just more mileage on the odometer.

The lesson: Don’t skip your class reunions.

Tribune Managing Editor Tim Engstrom’s column appears every Tuesday.