By the late ‘90s, Conan O’Brien used “The Year 2000" as a comic punchline, a sci-fi landmark date that no longer seemed so futuristic. These days, Y2K and its attendant computer concerns are answers to trivia questions. And on Thanksgiving weekend, the year became official reunion fodder. The classes of 2000 at Walt Whitman and Thomas Wootton high schools held their five-year reunions.
More than a quarter of the 407 Wootton ‘00 grads attended their five-year class reunion at the Rhino Bar and Pumphouse in Georgetown on Friday, Nov. 25. Whitman’s reunion took place the next night at Union Jack’s in Bethesda.
Terri West and Katie Mahjoubi were the event organizers for Wootton, and they opted for the Rhino Bar, a favorite spot for Mahjoubi, a Georgetown University graduate. Among the Wootton alums attending were a U.S. soldier back from Iraq, and a former ballerina who is now an engineer for Honda.
“It wasn’t as awkward as a few people thought it would be,” Mahjoubi said. “I think that people really matured in five years. … They’ve still got the good qualities, without all the pettiness they might have had in high school.