Amish Confidential (7 page)

My second drunk-driving arrest, there wasn’t a bar in sight, but there was no shortage of alcohol. It was after a camping trip. We’d been up all night drinking. I remember I got only about two hours’ sleep. Those Lancaster County sheriff’s deputies seemed to be everywhere. Again, I was pulled over and again, I flunked the test. This time, though, they didn’t just ticket and fine me. Since it was my second offense, I served twenty-eight days in jail.

There’s so much talk about the wild and crazy things Amish kids do when they taste a little freedom. Some of that talk is true. But the vast majority of what we did in my Rumspringa days, I look back on
with pride and pleasure.

It revealed a world I hardly knew existed. I learned some things about myself I had never even thought about. I gained some confidence and some understanding, though all of it came at a price. My faith would never be as unquestioning again.

CHAPTER 6

COURTING TROUBLE

“G
o talk to her,” the girl’s friend said to me. “She likes you. You should talk to her.”

So I worked up my courage. I traded glances with Quacky and my other friends. I walked over and spoke to the girl, who had blue eyes, angular features and a long, perfect nose. Her name was Sarah. Of course it was. Every third Amish girl, it seems, is Sarah.

“Hi,” I said.

No response.

“Hi,” I said again. “How you doin’?”

“Fine.”

It was the stingiest, tiniest, most reluctant
fine
imaginable. It definitely didn’t say, “Hi, thanks for coming over. I’ve been hoping you’d come talk to me.” This
fine
was more like, “What made you decide to bother me?” The
fine
was followed by a blank, bored stare.

Amish girls are hard to talk to and harder to date. They have ways of repelling guys they’re not interested in and ways of getting the ones they want. They’ll check you out. They’ll move on quickly. If you’re not their type, whatever that is, they won’t give you five
minutes of their time. Maybe later, when everyone grows older, the guys might be the ones running the businesses and making decisions on the farm. But when young people are at the age of pairing off, those meek-looking, fresh-faced girls are totally in charge.

It is the girl who starts the relationship. It’s the girl who breaks it off. It isn’t what the guy wants that matters. It’s what the girl wants. Targeting prospects, narrowing the field, making selections, planning dates, going steady, getting baptized, getting hitched—the boys are there, they’re included, but they’re mostly along for the ride.

“Okay,” I said with a shrug to one-word Sarah before I walked away.

These girls have their own reconnaissance system and advance teams. Their friends will summon you to get a better look. They will lure you in with encouraging talk: “You should date her.” When you get to the point of finally asking her out, the girl will just as likely cut you off. Those shy, reclusive Amish girls have a very clear idea of who they want to be with. They don’t believe in settling. They are certain they will get that guy.

It wasn’t just me. Back in those awkward days, many of my male friends got the same treatment. I’ve gotten a little better at this stuff over the years. I’ve built up my confidence. I’ve become more comfortable talking with girls, which isn’t saying too much, I know, because I started out so clumsy. But even now, I’d say, the girls and the women are firmly in charge of the social side of living Amish. They have things right about where they want them. They like things the old-fashioned way.

L
et’s face facts: Most single Amish people won’t be finding their soul mates on Match.com—or even ChristianMingle or eHar
mony. First, there’s the issue of Internet access without electricity. Then there’s the culture of bashfulness, the stern prohibition on dating outside the faith and the stylistic challenges of white bonnets and black hats. There are other practical hurdles as well: Not too many English singles want to go courting by horse-and-buggy.

Yes, being Amish does present some special dating challenges.

In fact, most of today’s other popular venues for pairing off aren’t available to the Amish. We don’t go to coed high schools. Heck, we don’t go to
any
high schools. There’s no college or grad school, much less fraternity mixers and boy-girl dorms. Our early jobs usually don’t present many dating prospects, either. Who are we going to meet on the family farm? Our older siblings? The occasional visiting cousin? A few of our precocious friends might have found lifelong sweethearts in seventh grade, but that’s no easy trick when the one-room Amish school has a total enrollment of thirty or thirty-five students, and you’re already related to half of them. But for most of us, that leaves the traditional Amish hunting grounds—church, family setups, youth groups, and the weddings of relatives and friends. For the marriage-minded Amish, the old ways are the best ways all over again. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. Short of deciding between heaven and hell, choosing a mate is the most important decision an Amish person will ever be invited to make. Divorce, after all, is strictly forbidden.

Given all we’re up against, it’s amazing anyone ever pairs off.

Somehow or another, young Amish adults need to find lifelong partners who share their values, customs and outlook—and, ideally, who are smoking hot. Okay, that last one isn’t mentioned in the Ordnung. But I’ve known a lot of young Amish men and women
in their prime marriage-eligible years. Just like people everywhere, they want someone they are excited about, even if the Amish criteria for smoking hot might seem a little odd. There’s no going for the girl who dresses sexiest in a modest calf-length dress. These girls don’t wear makeup because they’re not supposed to draw attention to themselves. Still, the Amish have their own romance checklists. Everybody does. Strong back? Check. Sturdy thighs? Check. Appears fertile? Check. Kind heart? Check. Nice smile? Double check.

This all sets off a careful Amish courting ritual.

When a possible connection is made and the guy believes he’s finally gotten the nod to proceed, he might offer the girl a ride home in his buggy, then go inside to meet her parents. If all goes well, the young couple will sit in the parlor and talk awhile. If Mom likes the pairing, she may bring out a plate of homemade cookies or some cheese straws. And if things keep clicking, the guy and girl could eventually decide to go steady.

Going steady doesn’t mean they’ll be together constantly—more like once a week. Every other Sunday, they can see each other at church, then hang around after the service to talk and sing with the other young people. It’s the non-church weekends when there’s time for a Saturday-night date, just the two of them. They don’t even need to drag the Rumspringa posse along. Will it be hot chocolate in the back of the buggy? Or reciting favorite Bible verses together from memory? Or sharing dreams of many children and a many-acred farm? Or will the evening be filled with racier intentions? Will the young couple sneak out to their secret spot behind the barn? When you’re young and Amish and possibly in love, you know that someone’s always watching—and those prying eyes can be human
or divine. It all comes down to what your own beliefs are and how much risk you want to take.

M
any Amish teenagers have premarital sex, just like teens in other places do. Are they having more sex or less sex? We could debate that all day. The truth is there are no reliable surveys on Amish kids doing it. And don’t hold your breath. Because we aren’t likely to get good data on this any time soon. Amish sixteen-year-olds probably won’t report their next grope-and-grind session to Gallup or Quinnipiac any more than they’ll report it to their parents or to the bishop. And you probably won’t find good evidence on Facebook, either. There’s the occasional Amish-teen status update from a forbidden smartphone, but Amish teens tend to use sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter with extra discretion and modesty, when they use social media at all. All I’m saying is, please, don’t believe all the chastity talk. Amish parents are mostly kidding themselves when they say, “Oh, our fine youngsters wouldn’t dare be involved in anything like sex! They’re too busy canning vegetables and singing hymns!”

As if!

Here’s what I know from my own experiences and those of many friends, relatives, neighbors and bar-stool companions: The Amish may live on farms in out-of-the-way places, but we aren’t stuck in flyover country as far as youthful hormones are concerned. God may be standing guard over all of us, but anatomy and biology haven’t thrown in the towel yet.

From holding hands to making out to reaching down to—well, you get my point. The only thing I will say for certain is this: In my group, the early attempts were clumsy, wrapped up in awkwardness,
inexperience and guilt. And we all thought about sex a whole lot more than we were doing it.

But except for the suspenders and prim bonnets, didn’t that make us about the same as young people everywhere?

N
ot long ago, I asked some of my Amish friends how much sex education they got at home. The answers came in about like I expected:

“Not a word.”

“The night before I got married, my father sat me down. He seemed very uncomfortable. ‘Um, if there’s anything you want to know about, just ask me, okay?’ I said there wasn’t. He said, ‘Good.’ ”

“The only sex education I got,” one female friend said, “was watching a litter of kittens be born at our neighbor’s house. My mother wasn’t happy when she heard I’d seen that. I thought I might be going to hell. But actually, that taught me a lot about where babies come from. Farm kids don’t stay in the dark too long.”

My father did what he could to keep us there. He never had a birds-and-bees talk with me or any of my brothers. He even made sure I wasn’t in the barn when he was arranging for the cows and bulls to breed. God knows how that might have scarred me!

Several of my female friends said their mothers had warned them about getting their periods—or at least comforted them afterward by explaining that they weren’t dying. But most of my friends, male and female, said they picked up a lot of what they learned in little snatches from friends, cousins and older siblings. Some of that information was probably exaggerated or just plain wrong. (
“I’m not sure, but I think you might get pregnant from French-kissing a boy!”
)
And frankly, being on the back side of the sex-education
curve, I’m not sure our knowledge was ever all that complete. Even today, I sometimes joke about my own lingering cluelessness: “You’d really be amazed at how much I still don’t know!”

I
’ll bet you already know the traditional Amish view on sex. It can be summed up in exactly four words: “Go forth and multiply.” Genesis 1:22 stretches it out to nine: “And God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful, and multiply.’ ” And then you have one more important wrinkle: All that is supposed to happen
after getting married
. Marriage, sex, babies—in that order and, hopefully, without any unnecessary delay. Ever since Jakob Ammann roamed the earth, his followers and descendants have been told over and over again in no uncertain terms: Sex isn’t for fun. It’s for making babies. Now, get busy, kids!

The Amish have certainly taken that message to heart, continuing to see children as a precious gift from God. It would be rude, wouldn’t it, to refuse God’s gift—or six or eight or ten of them? There’s a practical side to this, as well: the old farm-family view of children as extra hands at planting and harvest time. Those aren’t just hungry mouths to feed! Those are little farm workers who will soon be ready to sweep the barn or help out in the fields!

The numbers don’t lie: Six or seven children—that’s normal for Amish families. It’s also two or three times the size of a typical American Catholic family, a group that once had a reputation for producing large broods. I know our own blended Stoltzfus-Peachey clan helped pull the average up a little. But our fifteen didn’t raise any eyebrows in Lebanon County, I promise you that. And we were total amateurs compared to the Troyers of Kokomo,
Indiana. John Troyer was married to Catherine Schrock. Together, they had twelve children. That’s a good-sized family but far from shocking by Amish standards. Then Catherine died and John married her cousin, Caroline Schrock Kendall, a young widow with two children. Then John and Caroline had seventeen children together for a total of thirty-one. No one can know for sure if that’s an Amish record, but there are twenty-nine Troyers who can say today, “I’m a middle child.”

I’ll admit, that’s a little extreme. But every Amish person knows a family or two like the Troyers. And the average Amish family isn’t likely to shrink much in the years to come. The Amish elders still stand where they always have on the question of birth control, and that birth-control rule can be summed up in two words: “Hell no!” They forbid anything that gets in the way of more children, especially a condom, a diaphragm or a birth-control pill. They don’t even condone so-called natural family-planning techniques like the rhythm method. In recent years, there’s been a very slight thawing on this, emphasis on very slight. No church leaders have announced any policy changes, and very few Amish couples will admit in public to using birth control. A few will quietly tell you they do for “medical reasons” or “because the doctor told [them] to.”

But for now, “Amish family” and “large Amish family” mean almost exactly the same thing. And it almost always starts with a large Amish wedding.

B
y tradition, all these moves are laid out in intricate detail. It’s like all Amish lives and futures are written in a dusty old book somewhere, and we get handed the pages one at a time.

Most Amish weddings are held in November or December, which makes sense because that’s when the harvest is over and the heavy farm work is done. There’s nothing the Amish are better at than sensible tradition. Even in families that don’t live on farms, it’s almost unheard of to plan a big June wedding. Who would be able to come at the height of the growing and tourist season? Late fall is wedding time, and Tuesdays and Thursdays are the favorite days, giving the bride’s family extra time to prepare before and clean up after without bumping into Sunday services. That brief two-month window doesn’t leave many open days to choose from. During “wedding season,” many Amish people are invited to two or three weddings per week.

All Amish weddings are like all other Amish weddings. I’ve never had a wedding myself. But believe me, I’ve attended enough of them to know the script line by line.

The bride usually makes her own wedding dress out of blue or purple fabric. Her two attendants make dresses from the same material. All three women will wear Amish prayer capes and aprons. Like everything else Amish, nothing goes to waste. After she’s married, the bride will wear that dress to church on Sundays. And when death does them part, she’ll wear that dress to be buried in. The Amish groom and his two attendants will wear black suits, white shirts, black-brimmed hats, black high-topped boots and, in a break from every other day, when no neckwear is allowed, black bow ties. There are no wedding rings, no flowers and no veils.