Did you see that thing recently about the pediatric neurologist who found the behavior of her teenage boys so anomalous that she started looking into their brains? More or less literally? She was on NPR last week. I've never been all that impressed with neurologists, I have to say. I (temporarily) lost the ability to use my left leg after my first son was born, and when I went to the neurologist there was a lot of 'can you feel this?' and 'push against my hand.' I'm sure it was a lot more sophisticated than it seemed. But. And then when my husband's brain went kaflooey once... well let's just say after two weeks of hospitalization and a zillion tests, "His brain went kaflooey" is kind of the best diagnosis anyone came up with. But this lady, she seems to have made some headway. She found research that suggests that the teenage frontal lobe, the evaluative part of the brain, is not yet optimally connected with the parts that, say, drive a car or put on eyeliner or twitter.
"It's the part of the brain that says: 'Is this a good idea? What is the consequence of this action?' " Jensen says. "It's not that they don't have a frontal lobe. And they can use it. But they're going to access it more slowly."
That's because the nerve cells that connect teenagers' frontal lobes with the rest of their brains are sluggish. Teenagers don't have as much of the fatty coating called myelin, or "white matter," that adults have in this area.
Think of it as insulation on an electrical wire. Nerves need myelin for nerve signals to flow freely. Spotty or thin myelin leads to inefficient communication between one part of the brain and another.
This may make teens tough to live with and tough to love, and may lead to an abundance of ankle monitors and bad-boy boyfriends, but it sure makes them excellent characters in novels.
What would Paper Towns be without the poor impulse control that leads to Q's giant smelly road trip? If Doug were not such a thoughtless ass, would Fat Vampire be so painful/funny? And it is only because the main character is Going Bovine is a teenager, and thus halfway insane in the first place, that we remain a little confused about what exactly is going on in the novel until the very end.
Volume 6
As it is with Freak Magnet
ANYWAY. Here we have two teen characters, both a bit myelin-deprived, if you ask me. Gloria is the magnet, a beautiful poet, grieving and angry and a total, total slob. Gloria just wants to be left alone, but she is plagued by unwanted attention. Charlie is the freak. He's not bad-looking, but he's completely lacking an edit function, which keeps him pretty isolated too. The story is told in alternating chapters, from each character's point of view. They are funny together, and their actions toward each other are unexpected. Every move has a consequence, but, true to the nature of the teenage brain, each consequence is almost impossible to predict.
It's a little, friendly, funny, achy story, with characters that you quickly become fond of. Not just the main characters, but the supporting ones too: Charlie's friend Edison, wheelchair jockey and frequently-ignored voice of reason; Gloria's big sister, whose supportive and loving nature you might not expect given her idiotic cosplayer outfits. (It's Otakon weekend in Baltimore and blue wigs are currently the norm.)
And while realistic fiction written for and starring teens very much benefits, as I said, from the reckless decisions that teens make, the best writers of realistic teen fiction develop their characters so that you can see their potential, you get a sense of what their futures will look like once their wiring becomes fully insulated. You even have an idea how Charlie and Gloria will look back on these episodes - driving to the drugstore wrapped in a bedspread, for example, or getting stuck on the roof of a house.
Driving to Toledo, Ohio in the middle of the night. Exploring abandoned buildings. Spitting on a policeman from a great height. Missing.
Ah, youth.
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