I became "friends" with some of them. The two brothers that I worked directly for would chat with me about almost anything. One of the wives would say niceties to me, the other was mute with me. Most of the children were mute with me but some were friendly enough, especially when we'd work side by side like filling my truck with produce from a buggy. The grandmother was the kindest to me. She invited me into her home, answered my questions and took me out to the barn to see the babies without my asking. She also made me shoo fly pie when I told her how much I liked it.
There were cousins and other relatives and community that I worked for, as well. Some would leave me for hours in the hot sun and others would invite me into the barn or onto the porch. I really got a wide variety of responses from the community. It was also this time in my life that I was moody and dressed in all black with heavy black eyeliner. I'm pretty shocked that some of them responded to me. My dad worked for them as well, mostly when I couldn't commit to a day or time that they needed me, and they responded in almost the same way to him - some were friendly, some were not friendly but not rude.
My most laughable moment was when the phone rang at 0400. One of my parents answered, woke me up and told me that Elim was on the phone. I remember the back and forth... "who?" "Elim." "I don't know an Elim..."
I finally get awake enough to go to the phone and it was someone in the Amish community (obviously Elim) calling me to pick him up. I had never met him before, I guess my phone number was shared widely among the community... I yelled at him that it was 4 am and that normal people were asleep and that he'd have to find someone else to pick him up. I eventually met him later that summer and I as an adult I have now come to respect that 4 am is a normal awake time (I was up at midnight last night after sleeping 4 hours).
The second funniest time was when I was driving brother Roy home from something. We hit a giant bug which smeared all over the windshield. He looked at me and said "what's the last thing that goes through a bugs mind when it hits the windshield?" Perplexed, I said I didn't know. He deadpanned: "its butt!"
They're not so different than us.
