Jenice Armstrong: A must-read for parents of at-risk teens

A MOTIVATIONAL speaker

who visited his high school got through to my 15-year-old nephew the other day - at least we're hoping it did - and what he said was: The choices you make today can affect the rest of your life.

A simple but profound message and one that needs to come at young people in all kinds of ways before they even think of dropping out of school or becoming a teen mother. That's why parents of at-risk teens, perhaps discouraged by the dismally high youth unemployment rate this summer, should take heed of a new paperback that should be a must-read on their summer reading list.

Written by a friend of mine, Mister Mann Frisby, a former Daily News reporter, "Holla Back But Listen First: A Life Guide for Young Adults" is essentially a collection of life lessons gleaned from celebrities and everyday folks alike on their way to success. In it, Cheryl "Salt" Wray, of the iconic hip-hop group Salt-n-Pepa, tells of getting pregnant at 14 and having a late-term abortion.

"I was awake for the entire experience," she says. "It was excruciatingly painful. I was crying and screaming through the whole thing. My mother had to wait outside because she could not be in the room with me. I had to deal with that horrible experience because it was the consequence of a choice I made."

Angela Nissel, the Philly native who made it big in Hollywood working as a writer/producer on "Scrubs" and whose two books have been optioned by Halle Berry, talks about "being the fast girl."

"At 14 I was sleeping with men who were 19 and 20 years old. Some of them were even drug dealers. . . . My behavior brought me so much negative attention. The girls who bullied me would ring my doorbell just to call me a whore when I opened the door. I would smile when I closed the door because I didn't want my mother to know what was going on."

Beverly Nelson, the comedienne known as B-Phlat, tells of being just 16 and hanging out in a park with a friend the night she hopped into a car with two guys with enough marijuana and liquor to go around. "The next thing you know, Mike turned the car off. He said, 'So wassup? What are y'all trying to do? Are y'all trying to f--- or what?' I said, 'We ain't doing nothing. We are going to get out and walk.' Vonnie [her friend] panicked because of where we were, but I wasn't about to have sex with anyone. I may have been drinking and smoking weed, but I was still a virgin at that time. Having sex with them was not an option.

"As we're talking about what we're going to do, Mike goes into his trunk and pulls out this huge machete. Then he asked again if we were ready to have sex with them. I didn't know what to do, but I knew I was not having sex. The other dude kept laughing like it was a big joke, but we were scared."

Nelson and her friend got away that night, but not before learning a valuable lesson about being so fast as they used to say back then. "For me, that was a turning point," said Nelson, who will be featured Friday at the Liacouras Center in a comedy show called "Laugh Your A-- Off Comedy Jam."

For Frisby, who overcame some seemingly insurmountable hurdles of his own, "Holla Back" wasn't just a journalistic exercise but an outgrowth of his motivational work with local teens. The founder of PhatBack Athletics, a mentorship program for boys, he'd already written a "Holla Back" book for young males but kept being invited to schools around the country to motivate girls, too.

So, Frisby, who also has written two novels, began interviewing female celebrities such as Jill Scott, Eve and actress Taraji P. Henson ("Talk to Me" and "Baby Boy").

"It's not like people were talking about themselves just to be in a magazine," Frisby said yesterday. "They were very giving of themselves, trying to put it on the table. I love that Salt had the heart and the courage to talk about getting pregnant early . . . here she is, 40 years old, and she can still count something from when she was 15 as being the worst experience of her life."

What he wants to share with the young people he talks with is that just because someone is successful doesn't mean that he or she hasn't suffered along the way or experienced the same things as everyone else.

"Everybody's road hasn't been sweet and I never want it to seem that way." *

Mister Mann Frisby, author of "Holla Back But Listen First: A Life Guide for Young Adults," will sign copies of the book tonight from 6 to 9 at the Kulture Shop, 45th Street and Baltimore Avenue.

Have you peeped a hot trend that hasn't been reported? E-mail heyjen@phillynews.com and let me know what you know.