The Alien Brain
In the late 1960s, my uncle Frankie was the neighborhood archetype of the South Side "bad boy." Long before his trajectory escalated into a rap sheet that included an attempted murder charge, he was just a kid testing the boundaries of gravity—jumping from one flat garage roof to the next across alleys, running on an internal engine fueled by pure adrenaline.
In the lexicon of child development, this isn't just misbehavior; it is evolutionary architecture. The adolescent brain undergoes a massive, chaotic remodeling process where the limbic system—the emotional, sensation-seeking epicenter—is fully operational, while the prefrontal cortex—the braking system responsible for impulse control, long-term consequence planning, and abstract empathy—remains under construction until roughly age twenty-five. Until that developmental threshold is crossed, a teenager is operating a high-powered sports car with a set of bicycle brakes. They don't just miscalculate risk; their biology actively craves it.
This biological reality was on full display on a truant afternoon in 1967. Instead of sitting in a high school classroom, Frankie and his buddy Mickey were killing a bottle of cheap liquor in Grant Park, watching the city pass them by.
Eventually, they drifted down into the concrete trenches of the Illinois Central commuter platforms. It was late afternoon. Standing near them on the below-street-level platform was a woman who looked exhausted—likely finishing a punishing shift at one of the department stores or boutiques lining the Magnificent Mile.
Out of nowhere, a blur of motion cut through the platform. A man sprinted past, tore the purse from the woman’s grip, and bolted for the stairs.
The theft triggered an immediate, primitive response in Frankie. It wasn’t a calculated moral decision; it was a high-signal chase instinct. Frankie and Mickey took off after the thief, pounding up the concrete stairs onto the street level of Michigan Avenue, weaving through commuters, and plunging back down into a secondary transfer trench.
By the time they hit the lower tracks, Mickey had fallen behind, his lungs burning from the liquor and the sprint. It was just Frankie and the thief, trapped in a concrete dead-end, both completely out of breath.
The thief backed up against the edge of a concrete retaining wall, looking down at the active rails below. He had just enough wind left to issue a desperate ultimatum: "If you come any closer, I’ll jump."
The fully cooked adult brain is wired to pause here. A mature mind introduces variables of humanity, liability, and the sanctity of life. But Frankie was operating on an alien frequency. He didn't care.
"Jump," Frankie said.
And the guy jumped.
Frankie walked to the masonry ledge and looked over. Fifteen feet below, the thief was lying crooked on the ballasted track bed, his body broken and silenced by the impact. The stolen purse was resting on the ties right next to him.
An adult with an operational prefrontal cortex would have waited for the police, or at least checked for a pulse. Frankie didn't give it a second thought. He didn't check the body, and he didn't wait around for sirens. He simply turned around, left the trench, and went his own way. To this day, he has no idea if the young man on the tracks survived.
From a contemporary lens, Frankie’s cold indifference feels monstrous. But to understand the "bad psychology" of that platform, you have to look at the macro-grid of Chicago in 1967—a city fractured by deep-seated institutional injustice, racial segregation, and extreme economic volatility.
The young man who snatched that purse was likely operating under his own desperate biological and systemic imperatives. In a city that systematically starved specific neighborhoods of resources, crime wasn't just a moral failure; it was a predictable byproduct of a broken social contract. Yet to a white teenager from the South Side, the thief wasn't a victim of systemic inequality; he was an adversary who broke the playground rules of tribal territory. Frankie’s empathy hadn't been compromised—it simply hadn't been built yet.
Traditional institutions had no idea what to do with Frankie's specific wiring. School wasn't his gig, and the system predictably kicked him out, stamping him a failure because his GPA didn't conform to the compliance circuit.
But reality has a funny way of bypassing the school board. When Frankie finally entered the workforce, he found his footing in a brutal, honest trade. He became a butcher. As he told the family years later with a knowing grin, "The guy who hired me never asked about my GPA. He just wanted to see how I handled the knife."
There is a rugged pragmatism to the level plain of reality. The institutional structures might write you off because your brain is still a chaotic construction site, but out here on the pavement, the world eventually finds a use for the people who aren't afraid of the drop.
Practical Philosophy by Abel Graff
Abel Graff is a writer and practitioner deeply focused on psychology, practical philosophy, and human systems. Holding a doctorate in educational psychology, he spends his days analyzing how human beings navigate stress, identity, and change. He writes from the high-friction landscape of the Midwest.