In early teens, many of us prevaricated somewhat with our parents in describing our evening itineraries. A group of twelve or so formed a plan to meet at the Big Town Bowling Alley [http://mallsofamerica.blogspot.com/2006/08/big-town-mall.html] for some mixed team games—a relatively risky venture for this group of late blooming 15- and 16-year-olds.
And I can’t think of a more wholesome activity for young people than bowling. As Ernest Dichter, fifties marketing consultant, explained to the bowling alley industry:
The efforts and achievements of the bowling industry in modernizing their establishments and upgrading their equipment is a tribute to their foresight and
perception in understanding the growing leisure needs of people today. . . . Bowling . . . represents a rare combination of a sport, a game, and a highly desirable and enjoyable social activity. Furthermore, the fact that people of varying degrees of skill and proficiency can easily participate in bowling without being subjected to outside pressure or criticism from teammates has made this sport one which enjoys the maximum amount of universality. . . . [Bowling] is among the few athletic social activities which are not only acceptable to but particularly enjoyable for both men and women. Handbook of Consumer Motivations
But Mignon’s mother did not want her to go—I’m not sure if she disliked bowling (that beery, blue collar activity) or boys more—and Mignon had to tell a fib. Her mother suspected monkey business, found her out at the bowling alley, and escorted her home.
Here’s what modern neurobiologists tell us was happening in Mignon’s brain:
The remodeling of the adolescent brain—a brain that science had considered largely finished—spreads over such a wide range of systems that we need to rethink how we think of teenagers altogether. Over a span of ten to twelve years, the adolescent brain, through a series of sometimes subtle and something breathtakingly dramatic shifts, is transformed from child to adult. The grey matter of an adolescent’s frontal lobes grows denser [synaptogenesis] and then scales back [pruning], molding a leaner thinking machine. The teenage brain fine-tunes its most human part, the prefrontal cortex, the place that helps us cast a wary eye, link cause to effect, decide “maybe not”—the part, in fact, that acts grown up. The brain of the teenager undergoes a proliferation of connections for dopamine, a neurotransmitter important for movement, alertness, pleasure—high levels that may have evolved to help adolescents of many species take the necessary risks for survival, from exploring new fields for food to asking that saucy girl to dance. . . .The long, thin arms that connect brain cells are coated with insulation [myelination] that speeds signals in brain regions devoted to such fundamental capacities as emotions and language.
The Primal Teen by Barbara Strauch
More specifically, Mignon recently had experienced a flourishing or exuberance of her prefrontal cortex, its volume increasing by 5-10 percent from middle childhood; then her brain began a rapid pruning back, losing one percent of synapses per year until age 18 and beginning a gradual myelination and rigidifying of those neural pathways that had worked well in her adaptation. One of her experimentations was likely a simple synaptic lie to mom, which from the long evolutionary view, was an effective way to solve a problem and get what she wanted—it’s future oriented thinking. But mom likely corrected that neural pathway before it was set in myelin.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/work/adolescent.html
More about Big Town:
http://davenportandwiggins.com/_wsn/page10.html
http://deadmalls.com/malls/big_town_mall.html
http://big-town-mall.blogspot.com/2006/09/where-was-big-town-mall.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Town_Mall
