You have just spent about an hour getting ready with your friends. Your skinny jeans pair nicely with the white converse and a slightly cropped t-shirt (note the Harderwyk church dress code). You cruise into the parking lot, in the passenger seat of your mom’s car. Though you pull up to the event 30 minutes early, the massive line of kids at the door tells you that 30 minutes was not enough. After waiting to get the glistening neon wristband placed on your arm, you enter the building. 

   The first room on your right is the dance room. It is filled with moist tweens, their hormones releasing into the air. Some dance awkwardly far apart and others dance awkwardly close. The walls are wet. The air is filled with a foggy substance composed of… no one really knows. Next door, the gym is filled with pre AND post pubescent boys. Some have staches and others voices are still cracking without relent. They band together to play 9-Square, the one and only game available to them. 

   As you move to the upper floor, the stench of mediocre pizza fills the air. The fear that fills your body when you enter the Guitar Hero room around the corner may just be worth the comfy couches and escape from girls crying because their crush wouldn’t slow dance with them to “Speechless” by Dan +Shay in the, still very damp, dance room. To experience this feeling, all you have to do is think back to your middle school years, attending the highlight of everyone’s month: Function. 

   Function had a large variety of rooms making it so everyone could find their niche.

Dance Room

   On the first floor, there was obviously the famous dance room that everyone found themselves in at some time or another. The songs “Big Green Tractor,” “Lip Gloss,” and “Cupid Shuffle” blasted throughout the building, luring in new (soon to be sweaty) victims. Sr. Caden Mika shared a very relatable quote, “If you put your hand on the wall, it began to sweat.

 Gaming Room

 Further down the hallway housed a different crowd. The gaming room. The few TV’s were surrounded by tweens that either reeked of B.O. or too much Axe body spray. They were all waiting their turn to race as Donkey Kong in Mario Kart on the Wii, while a few others utilized the one and only coveted PS4.

Karaoke

   Now, the people who participated in the Karaoke room… were not the people who should have been participating in the Karaoke room. Boys with squeaky voices screaming the lyrics to Toto’s “Africa” made the crowd go wild. Girls would wait patiently to debut their “talent.” Function goers seemed to make it necessary for everyone to listen to a new bad rendition of “Baby” by Justin Bieber a minimum of three times per hour.

Gym !HAZARD!

   This next stop was a big safety hazard. People who entered had to beware of flying objects that could potentially hit them in the head upon entry. The gym included about three organized games: basketball, gaga ball, and the very popular 9-Square. To outsiders, 9-Square was like an addiction. Player’s souls would succumb to the game, and it would take a miracle to be set free. Sr. Jackson Wiegerink captured the essence of this location with this quote, “The constant worry of being hit in the head with a ball when you venture your way into the gym always makes it interesting.”

Pizza Area

   Above the gym and up the stairs was the Pizza/Cafe area. The pizza was about room temperature, but the ravenous middle school students couldn’t seem to resist. Some kids would sit at tables, munching and airdropping memes to each other, and others would peer over the balcony at the gym, watching their crush play 9-square as if he were a long lost lover.

Guitar Hero Room

   No one really knows everything that went down in the guitar hero room. In the front row were people genuinely there to play guitar hero, but the many rows of couches made the back row a perfect spot for amorous tweens to act on their urges. Rumors of what went on on those couches spread like wildfire, while the truth was never really revealed…

Picture room

 This room tried so hard to be a photobooth, but in retrospect it was really just a random high schooler documenting evidence of our most hideous and embarrassing moments. The hulk fists, the hula lei’s, and the plastic crowns were all necessary accessories for the images that still haunt most of us to this day!

I really could go on and on about the embarrassing or out-of-pocket moments from function, but something that we all have to take into consideration is how much we’ve learned and grown since then. We learned how to actually dance instead of just jumping and lip syncing the lyrics to “Shake it Off” with 100 other kids. We learned that dressing like a yellow highlighter is not a fashion statement (that one was for you, boys). We learned to wear deodorant! Most importantly, a lot of us learned to stop taking ourselves too seriously, and to embrace ourselves in our own special ways. So, what the freak was function? Something goofy, awesome, and necessary that molded our growth as adolescents and made us the people we are today.