This issue was published on May 14, 1998

“But, you mean your dad doesn’t even have a gun?” I looked dumbfounded at Trista as she waited for my reply. “Well, no,” I answered. Trista is from Fargo, North Dakota, and she was just as surprised by the fact that no one in my family had a gun, as I was at the fact that her boyfriend had just given her a rifle for her birthday.

Recently, 10 high school seniors and their chaperone, Spanish teacher Lynn Ditchfield, returned from an educational field trip to Costa Rica. "It was a fabulous trip; it incorporated important experiences for all of us," said Mrs. Ditchfield. During the seven days spent in the outskirts of San Jose, the students stayed in the homes of Costa Rican families.

To many people, teenagers are a population within the population, a separate species that is impossible to relate to and should be isolated from the rest of the world until their 20th birthdays, when they will magically shed their pimples and eyebrow rings and merge back into the adult population.