HELENA -- Pages are to the Legislature what oil is to an engine. Without them, legislators would sputter in disarray, constituents would fume and eventually everything would just break down.

"We wouldn't get anything if it weren't for the pages," said Sen. Jesse Laslovich, D-Anaconda. "They are the deliverers of information."

Each week during the session, 14 new high school juniors and seniors from across Montana travel to Helena to work as pages and witness first-hand how legislators create policy and shape Montana's future.

Their days consist mostly of delivering messages and fetching legislators lunches, which some pages admitted sounded tedious and boring at first. But what these high schoolers realized is that the experience is only what you make of it.

"If you are not interested in politics, then it will just seem like running errands," said 18-year-old Evan Withrow, a senior from Geraldine.

Withrow was the only boy page serving with seven girls, which is an average male-to-female ratio, said Clementine Lord, the page coordinator for the Senate. In that sense, Withrow said, he considers himself lucky.

All the pages are paid $5.15 an hour, but receive tips from lobbyists and lawmakers for running personal errands.

The pages disagreed on whether Republicans or Democrats were better tippers, but Maia Aageson, a junior at Blue Sky High School in Rudyard, said Sen. Steve Gallus, D-Butte and Sen. Sam Kitzenberg, R-Glasgow were among the most generous.

"One of my biggest frustrations is when they give them change," said Laslovich, whose first served in the House in 2001, only three years after serving as a page himself. "I'd rather have something that folds than something that jingles."

Laslovich distinctly remember his days as a page, which is one reason why he so infrequently calls on their service, he said. At 21, Laslovich was serving in the House, while some of the pages at the time were kids he attended high school with. He could never bring himself to ask them to run an errand for him, he said.

"It was awkward, and it's still with me today," Laslovich said.

For some senators, serving as a page was a pivotal moment in launching future political careers.

"It's addictive," said Sen. John Brueggeman, R-Polson, who ran for office only four years after serving as a page. "It was my first dose of political heroin."

Sen. Bob Hawks, D-Bozeman, has a black-and-white photo on his desk of himself at age 13, serving as a page in 1955. His uniform consisted of a tight sweater that said "Senate" across the front and a little black bow tie.

But back then, things were much different.

Three pages in the Senate served the entire 90-day-session, Hawks said. There were no computers, so pages had to carefully file every bill. Pages were responsible for operating the two mechanical elevators by hand. And pages responded to a snap of a finger when legislators needed their assistance.

"We worked hard," Hawks said.

At the end of Hawks' time as a page, senators presented him with a lifetime pass to the Senate and extracted a promise he would one day serve in office. Hawks doesn't know if it was a routine question, but he was determined to uphold his promise.

"People no longer carry that responsibility to serve," he said. "I grew up with the notion you serve if you are capable. I would like to instill that sense of obligation in some of these pages."

Convincing pages to serve, however, may not be too difficult.

Claire Rosen, a 15-year-old from Billings and a freshman at a boarding school in California, spent her spring break serving as a page. Rosen is already politically minded beyond her years, which she said is thanks to her mother, Sen. Kim Gillan, D-Billings.

"People that know me know I'm a total liberal," she said. "I'm a Bush basher all the way."

When Rosen was in seventh grade, she made her own picket sign and went out to protest with the Billings public school teachers when they were on strike, Gillan said.

Rosen can't say whether she will run for the Legislature like her mom, but she feels it's important to understand politics and state government -- even for someone her age.

Bills such as the one to requiring schools to adopt anti-bullying policies is one example, Rosen said, of why kids should be interested in what goes on at the Legislature.

"Most think it's a bunch of fat guys making laws, but there are a lot of bills that affect people our age," she said. "I remember being bullied."

On top of delivering messages and fetching coffee, the pages met Gov. Brian Schweitzer and a Montana Supreme Court justice, had a pizza party with the Senate leaders, and toured the restricted upper dome of the Capitol.

They also witnessed a lively floor debate Tuesday when two Bozeman senators got into a heated argument.

"It was kind of ridiculous," Withrow said. "I expected them to be on a mature level on the Senate floor."

Yet, despite the occasional partisan attack, Katie Zerbe, a junior at Lustre Christian High School in Lustre, said she will leave the Legislature at the end of the week with a more positive perception of state government than she had coming in.

"Back home, all you hear about is the bad," she said. "A lot of good does go on here."

HELENA-The page jobs for the 2005 Legislature have already been filled. Those youths interested in serving as a page in the future should contact their local legislators or high school government teachers before the 2007 session.