Growing Up Amish Read Online Free PDF Page A

told me. “Then you can go.”
    Days passed.
    Then weeks.
    Then months.
    And then one August, the big day arrived—my sixth birthday. Now I was old enough. And big enough. Finally, I could go to school.
    I’ll never forget my first day. I left the house with my brothers and trudged importantly down the road, clutching my pencils and a ruler. Swinging my new blue-green lunch box, I strode bravely up the cracked and ancient concrete walkway and up the steps into the big white schoolhouse.
    Many of my classmates had already arrived and were milling about. Harold Stoll. Jerry Eicher. Willis Stoll. Abraham Marner. Lydia Wagler (my first cousin). And Lois Gascho.
    We stood around, wide eyed in awe. A few looked as if they might cry. The second and third graders marched about, casting condescending glances at the little first-grade rookies.
    I both liked and feared our teacher, Miss Eicher. Like most teachers, she had her favorites. I wasn’t one of them.
    I did have some small advantages, though. I knew my ABCs. I’d learned them at home from my older siblings. I could already read a bit from the tattered remnants of Dick and Jane books we had at home. And I could count in blocks of ten.
    I quickly fell into the routine at school.
    We learned to print the letters of the alphabet on rough paper in uneven, heavily pressed pencil lines. We learned to count and write numbers, and to add and subtract. And we learned to speak English. That was the rule. Only English at school. No Pennsylvania Dutch. After a few months, we were all moderately fluent in the language.
    On the whole, I really liked school, although I could never admit it.
    Girls liked school.
    Boys weren’t supposed to.
    When asked by an adult, I scoffed and claimed I didn’t. But I did.
    The first year passed, and before long, I was one of the second graders. Now I could strut about with my classmates and look pityingly on the poor, confused little first graders, huddled in groups looking as if they might cry.
    Miss Eicher was my second-grade teacher too. And no, I still wasn’t one of her favorites.
    I loved books and spent hours absorbing great chunks of words, to the detriment of my other studies. During that year, my class learned penmanship, writing in script. I hated it passionately. Our usual lesson consisted of writing sentences—usually about ten or twenty—from our lesson book. When we were done, Miss Eicher allowed us to go outside and play, even though it wasn’t recess.
    My friends Jerry and Harold zipped through their writing exercises, scrawling their sentences in mere minutes before rushing outside, while I sat at my desk, laboring mightily to finish my writing so I could join them. It took me forever.
    Eventually, my frustration got the best of me. One fateful day, I scrawled a few illegible lines across the barren expanse of notebook paper and rushed outside to join my classmates. Miss Eicher usually didn’t check our writing assignments anyway.
    In our next writing class, I did it again. And again, in the writing class after that. And again and again.
    I got away with it for weeks. It was my little secret.
    But the day of reckoning approached.
    Then it arrived.
    I was heading in from outside after the first bell rang when I heard someone call my name. Miss Eicher wanted to see me at my desk. Right now.
    A tremor of fear sliced through me.
    I walked inside with a sinking heart. Miss Eicher was sitting at my desk, looking down at my writing notebook, a crowd of my classmates clustered around her. A low murmur drifted through the group. I caught snatches, whispers. “A-a-ah.” “O-o-oh.” “Didn’t do his writing.” “Just made scribbles.” “Teacher just caught it. . . .”
    As I walked the gauntlet, my classmates lined the aisle, staring with wide accusing eyes and jostling for a better view of the imminent inquisition. I sensed no pity in them. Only morbid