it comes in pints?

Did you ever see the series (it was last summer, I think) called "Amish in the City"? It was a "reality show" based in L.A. (i.e., a lot of set-up situations, not what they'd encounter back home). But it was really interesting to see how the Amish kids reacted. By the end of the show, most of them were going to stay away from home for awhile longer. I often wonder what happened to them.

Julie,
I had heard of it, but stayed away because I was fairly certain it was just going to be used as an opportunity to treat the Amish in a typically condescending fashion. From what I read about it afterwards, I was pretty much right.

I'm curious as to whether rightwingprof has read the Wikipedia entry him/herself. It says "This conception contains some measure of scholars' folklore." SOME measure. Nowhere in the Wikipedia entry did it say this is "largely a myth." It simply indicates there are degrees of rumspringa...depending on the youths themselves, their families and their communities.

Of course this makes sense, and no where did Emily indicate otherwise.

Sorry...the propensity to lecture strikes in me the propensity to defend.

Rumspringa is largely a myth. There certainly is no official policy among the Amish to allow adolescents to run wild. You see Amish adolescents adopting English ways in communities with large Amish populations, because they can get away with it; you don't see it much in areas that are either largely Amish, or have small Amish populations, because they can't get away with it.

Prof,
What you're saying about the Amish holds true for adolescents in any community. Kids in big cities get away with more than kids in small towns because they can. I know you've lived around the Amish a great deal of your life, but please, I don't write about stuff unless I've done my homework and, for a "myth," there seems to be a great deal written about rumspringa and unless those documentarians made those kids up, there's even some of it caught on film.

See the wikipedia entry on rumspringa.

It's largely a myth, and it's certainly not some kind of Amish institution.

I *have* seen the Wikipedia entry on rumspringa. That's simple, seventh grade research paper stuff. I've read about it beyond that as well. I understand it. I've hardly written anything about it yet, so please, with all due respect, don't lecture me like I'm a stupid four-year-old child who hasn't even discovered Google yet.

Great flick - that lead boy was very touching to me. The main one, the drug dealer. I was really rooting for him ... hoping he would be okay.

Sheila,
Did you listen to the commentary with the director and producer?

I didn't! I (of course) watched it on video tape, because my technological level at that point was practically Amish itself.

I'm interested in what they had to say!

It's interesting, but kind of sad. The main kid, Faron - the one that got into drugs and everything - ended up not being able to make it in Florida with that sweet girl Emma and went back home to Indiana to live with his family, though he still hadn't "joined church." He ended up getting back into drugs and eventually wound up in the state penetentiary. The happy news is that the director said she still gets e-mails from Emma from time to time. She apparently spent the couple of years after the film traveling all over the place and having the time of her life.

Oh - damn. I can't say I'm surprised to hear what happened to him, but still - what a shame. He seemed like a nice kid, even with all the horrible stuff he was doing.

And I adored Emma - she was a total sweetheart!

Sheila,
You can read Faron's record here.

There was a couple of scenes included on the DVD that weren't in the movie (they literally taped hundreds of hours of footage. Can I see it ALL, please?). One of them was a really touching scene between two of these sweet kids that had been a couple for a few years. She really, really wanted to join church and get married and he'd decided that he didn't want to live that life, so she had to make this choice between the two. She ultimately decided to stay with him, but what an awful position to be in.

I'd love to see more of that footage too.