Here’s the song:
Here’s the story:
I must have heard this song
before I joined AmeriCorps NCCC,
but I listened to it A LOT MORE once I was in.
AmeriCorps is an national service program,
and the NCCC division is pretty awesome.
They put you in teams of eight,
with other people ages 18-24,
and every six weeks you get a new project to work on.
We traveled all over the US,
but since our term was after the hurricanes in Louisiana,
We spent a lot of time there.
We also did Wildland firefighting in Arizona,
and I went with another team member
to Wisconsin to help with some flood relief.
Our team was filled with strong, go-getter individuals.
We worked REALLY hard, and
unfortunately for our team leader,
didn’t need much leadership.
If you told us what needed to get done,
we would pretty much just do it
and figure it out on our own.
I don’t know how Funkytown got to be our official song,
but I remember a few times when we all sang it.
Once was when we were in Lake Charles, Louisiana,
working on a spring break project with The United Way.
Each week more than one hundred college kids would come,
and our team and another team of AmeriCorps volunteers would be split up and sent with each group.
It was really fun but also really difficult;
for the spring break kids,
this was a one week experience
and they were SUPER JAZZED about it.
For us it was our life for five weeks,
and we usually were a bit more tired than they were.
In addition to our regular work day duties,
we had AmeriCorps stuff we had to do,
including a lot of paperwork.
At the end of each project
we had to come up with this extensive project report,
where we wrote out everything we had done,
things we’d learned,
and other stuff like that.
For this project it was particularly tricky
because the eight of us were all split up
and doing different things.
There was a lot of compiling.
Our whole team was in the common area, working on it,
and only about a half an hour away from getting it done,
when we kind of hit a wall
of tiredness and grouchiness.
I don’t know who busted it out,
but Funkytown started playing.
We all jumped up instinctively,
because we didn’t just sing to this song.
We danced to it and played air instruments.
Yes, not just air guitar,
but air violin,
air drums,
and air cowbell.
We were all singing and dancing
And someone from The United Way
saw us and didn’t know what to think.
We were clearly having so much fun that he let us be.
After the song,
we felt so much better,
were smiling,
and finished up our task.
The other time I remember singing it was in New Orleans,
walking down the street during Mardi Gras.
We were having fun the whole weekend of course,
but then we started singing this song.
Everyone jumped in and danced,
skatted out the instruments,
and people even thought we were a traveling show.
Nope.
Just happy people.
I’m sure we played it many times
in the vans we rode around in
(That’s right, to get around the country
we rode around in those big 15-18 passenger vans!),
during our physical training,
and even on our days off.
That was NINE years ago,
and I still smile when I hear that song come on.
I can see all of my teammates dancing to it:
Charlie,
Janet,
Emily,
Keith,
Jared,
Shyra,
and Cassie.
We were a good group for sure.
And silly.
Which I think is how all groups sort of have to be.
