Teen Agers

It was the 20-year-old woman who probably had the greatest effect on the seven teen-agers touring the Shock-Trauma Unit in Baltimore.A picture of the beautiful, smiling young woman lay on the table in her hospital room. But what the teen-agers saw before them was a young woman who may or may not be aware of where she is.She had been hit by a car, driven by a drunken driver, while changing a tire a few months ago."Ninety percent of the patients who come into the Shock-Trauma live," said Carol Michalski, one of the nurses who volunteers to take teen-agers on the tour.

An Ellicott City teen-ager who spent several months researching the best way to kill before spiking his best friend's soda with cyanide was convicted yesterday of first-degree murder. The Howard County jury deliberated for less than three hours before returning the guilty verdict. Jurors apparently rejected a defense argument that Ryan T. Furlough, 19, was so depressed and so heavily medicated that he could not have been thinking rationally when he slipped cyanide into a soda can last year and offered it to 17-year-old Benjamin Vassiliev.

ALL YOU HAVE TO do is drink soda for two hours and smile when your aunts start squealing about how much you've grown," I said."That, and wear a shirt with a collar."

The photo shows a teen-ager with his arms triumphantly stretched skyward. For Levi Peresta - who had been in trouble with drugs only months before shooting this self-portrait in February - the stance is revealing. He has stayed clear of drugs all year, is on track to graduate with his class next year from Southern High School in Harwood and plans to reach for college and a future in art. "I'm standing on top of the hill, and that kind of symbolizes being on top of whatever I do," the Churchton 16-year-old said Wednesday as he helped mount a black-and-white photo exhibit at the Anne Arundel County Court House.

IT IS conventional wisdom that adolescence is the age of separation, the time when emerging young adults remove themselves, either gently or in unpleasant rebellion, from their parents' influence. The time when they are increasingly under the sway of their fellows; the time when they try out their decision-making wings. Difficult as this separation can be, especially for those of us who continue to view our teens as if they were still wearing footed sleepers, parents are told by popular experts to get out of the way. Of course, some of these adolescents make it easy.

A Columbia boy was attacked Tuesday near the parking lot of the Harper's Choice Village Center by teens who stole his bicycle, Howard County police said.The 11-year-old boy, who lives in Harper's Choice, was approached by two teen-agers while riding his bicycle around the village center, a police report said.One of the teen-agers pushed the boy to the ground, and both youths ran off with the bike, police said.The 11-year-old was not hurt in the incident.The first teen-ager is described as a 17-year-old black male with a dark complexion and a medium build, wearing a long black jacket, a black wool cap and long blue shorts over blue sweat pants.

Julia Greenwalt's best friend taught her to smoke two summers ago, when both girls were 11. Azure Greenway was just 10, and bored. Cathy Ford started at 13 in a foster home. And Lawrence Doerer took his first drag at 14, after years of watching his mother smoke Winstons and his father smoke Pall Malls."When you see a cigarette, you want to pick it up," said Michelle McVicker, 13, one of a dozen Baltimore teens who gather near Patterson Park and smoke.Michelle says that even her 9-year-old brother is smoking, part of a national trend that has health experts worried and President Clinton ready to crack down on illegal but widespread sales to youths and the billions spent by the tobacco industry on advertising and promotions.

Stephanie Confer, a 34-year-old mom who wears faded jeans and T-shirts and likes to sing along with rock songs, always felt she was a totally cool mom.Until her teen-age daughter Jackie started dropping hints to the contrary.Ms. Confer realized her loss of cool status when she was driving Jackie and some of Jackie's friends to the movies recently."I was singing along with the radio and when 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen came on, I started doing this head-banging thing. Jackie told me to stop," says Ms. Confer.

Baltimore officials, facing an adolescent pregnancy rate among the country's highest, are organizing doctors and foundation officials to promote Norplant, the contraceptive that lasts five years.Baltimore Health Commissioner Peter Beilenson has organized the Baltimore City Norplant Consortium and wants to target teen-agers, who use birth control erratically or not at all. The consortium is considering an advertising campaign and wants Norplant discussed in family-life classes in city schools.

A 15-year-old Columbia youth was charged as an adult yesterday in the shooting of another Columbia teen-ager at a Town Center apartment development Tuesday night, after the victim allegedly kicked the youth's dog.Police said that the incident took place shortly before 8:45 p.m. Tuesday, as two teen-agers stood in front of an apartment building in the 5300 block of Brook Way. One allegedly kicked the other's dog, police said, and the two teen-agers got...

Annapolis police are investigating the shooting death of a 16-year-old girl whose body was discovered early yesterday in a neighbor's apartment. The body of Traykia Jones of the 100 block of Obery Court was found shortly before 2 a.m. in an upstairs bedroom of her next-door neighbor's apartment, police said. Traykia was pronounced dead at the scene. The state medical examiner's autopsy report, returned to police yesterday afternoon, showed Traykia was a homicide victim who died from at least one gunshot wound.

One of the three Ellicott City teen-agers cleared of raping a 15-year-old girl at Mount Hebron High School received a 10-day suspension yesterday from the principal for his role in the sex incident, his mother said. Demitris R. Myrick, 18, a sophomore, has not returned to the school since Howard County police arrested him and two other boys April 15 and charged them with raping a 15-year-old girl in a bathroom. Authorities dropped the charges Tuesday after saying the girl had retracted her story.

Lawyers for an Ellicott City teen-ager accused of fatally poisoning a classmate last year by spiking his soda with cyanide have decided not to pursue an insanity defense. Instead, they hope that a Howard County judge will allow them to present evidence at trial that Ryan T. Furlough, 19, was so emotionally and mentally impaired at the time that he could not have willfully planned Benjamin Edward Vassiliev's death - and therefore could not possibly be guilty of first-degree, premeditated murder, according to information presented in new court filings and during a court hearing yesterday.

For months after her teen-age daughter died in a car accident at East Oliver Street and Broadway last July, Gina Gant couldn't bring herself to go near the intersection. Her daughter, Tiffany Gant, had just celebrated her 18th birthday when the car she was riding in collided with a police cruiser. The Dunbar High School honors graduate had planned to attend Coppin State College and become a criminal defense attorney. But in November, something else happened at the intersection that helped to ease her mother's pain a bit. A bright red-and-white street sign proclaiming "Tiffany Gant Way" went up, marking the corner in her daughter's memory.

LIVINGSTON, Texas - This is a town of pine forests, bass fishing and - near the end of a winding road - a cluster of low-slung concrete buildings that house 451 convicted killers on Texas' death row. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu visited one of the condemned men yesterday, pressing his hand in greeting against a glass partition. Dominique Green, 29, pressed his palm to the glass in return. It was part of a 45-minute meeting that accomplished what 11 years on death row had not: The high-profile visit gave Green a public face and, his supporters hope, a chance at life.

Wending their way into a crowded Maryland House of Delegates hearing room yesterday, the four 16-year-olds were worried they'd face tough questions from legislators. The bill the girls conceived and came to Annapolis to support would widen the pool of bone marrow donors by lowering the eligible age to 16, with parental consent. Minority patients have a particularly hard time finding donors and the girls, who are all African-American, are keenly aware of that. But it's a technical, medical subject, not a feel-good symbolic issue that politicians can support without much thought.

WITH A WINTER that has set records for cold and snow not quite over, most thoughts of summer are distant. But the city can't wait until it gets hot to prepare for the thousands of teen-agers who will be looking for summer jobs.Baltimore was well into spring last year and still didn't know what federal money might be available for summer jobs. That's not a problem this year. Congress made sure last July that there would be no federal funds for summer jobs in 1996. Being optimistic, that means there's no need to delay a strategy to keep as many teens as possible off the streets.

Teen-agers frequently complain that their parents just don't understand them.A group of parents from Broadneck is trying to do that through a series of seminars at Anne Arundel Community College. But they didn't invite those who are the focus of their talks.Walt Mueller, guest speaker at the seminar and the author of two advice books on teen-agers, said he sought the parents-only format so that he could speak frankly."When I talk about teen-agers and what's going on in their world, I want to talk to the parents and be straightforward with them," said Mr. Mueller, president of the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding and the father of four.

Marquis Page has been tempted, plenty of times. "I could have a baby, the situations I've been in," he says. But so far, the witty, outgoing 19-year-old has stayed chaste. He traces his discipline to the weekly abstinence classes he attends at New Creation Christian Church in Northeast Baltimore. Led by the program's charismatic director, Anthony Allen, a group of 20 to 35 teen-agers meets every Wednesday night in the church basement. Sitting in a large circle, they talk openly about the physical and emotional risks of premarital sex, the pull of peer pressure and the reality of hormone-fueled adolescent urges.

A body found in the woods in Hanover on Friday has been identified as that of a teen-ager whose bloody car was found last month in Millersville, Anne Arundel County police said yesterday. Nicholas David Tonic, 18, of the 1700 block of Sea Pine Circle in Severn had been reported missing Dec. 10, the same day his 1991 Ford Escort was found in a townhouse community in Millersville. Evidence in the vehicle led police to classify the case as a homicide. County workers found the body early Friday, and the state medical examiner's office used dental records to confirm that it was Tonic's, police said.