Some places in towns are in open areas like a field or such, people hang out by my school just because there's free space around it to do whatever, so they probably met there to have fun and then started a game. It's not very unusual if you come from a small town or suburban background.

Graveyards are the only place to play hide and seek type games where I live. Everywhere else is either flooded, flat grasslands, or private woods with owners that have guns...or some combination of the three. Might be the the same in OP's case.

Different towns have different hangout spots, it happens.

welcome to small-town America. When you're underage in a small town, you get your kicks in the weirdest ways

Not necessarily. You could go to church for many reasons and where I'm from, we have a church with a large cornfield behind it, so when they harvest it, kids like to go back there and play. Pretty normal to me.

I'm not sure I'm convinced that funerals are 'supposed' to be peaceful, if someone needs to cry or wail as part of their grieving process they should be able to. We've done something weird to grief in the West, it's expected to be a silent and/or private thing but that's not necessarily possible or healthy.

In my culture, funerals are anything but peaceful. I was raised in a culture where we love our loved ones hard. That's not to say that others don't, but when we loose one of ours, we don't hold back. We let it ALL out!! There's no such thing as sniffling quietly when it is someone you are closed to. That's just the way we love our own kind, because tbe rest of the world hates us.