Chapter One: Prelude

What if Amy and Sheldon had met under a different set of circumstances where Amy was in charge and Sheldon the subservient party? The results would lead to significant frustration and angst for both of them…and mass hilarity for the rest of us. I don't own one little bit of TBBT. Not a bit. I just have fun with the characters.

Prelude - Amy

You know how they say, "Be careful of what you wish for, you just might get it"? Yeah, that's my story and I'm going to tell it to you now. My name is Amy Farrah Fowler, and it went down like this:

It was a typical Thursday morning in my lab. In other words, it was boring. I had been forced to face some hard facts that day, namely that my entire life was boring. Driving to work that day, I came to the realization that at age thirty, I had never had a boyfriend, a bff, or even a guy friend, unless you counted Bert from the Geology Department and I sure didn't. Sometimes he liked to give others the impression we were dating, but nothing could have been further from the truth. I mean I liked Bert, he was a nice guy and everything, and he even thought I was pretty, but, yeah, no attraction on my part. I was hard put to even accept lunch dates with him to the cafeteria at work. Yeah, that not turned on by the guy.

Anyway, as I was saying, that Thursday morning I accepted the fact that my life was boring. Heck, I was boring! That kind of lent itself to the no boyfriend, no bff, no guy friend thing, you know? And it wasn't because I was a loser or anything. I had, and still have, a pretty sweet job as a neurobiologist at Cal Tech, that little fact definitely put me in the upper 1% in the Cool Job Derby. I was also pretty intelligent, still am for that matter. My IQ was over 170. For those of you who don't keep up with that kind of stuff, that's pretty much genius level. Still, I didn't seem to have what guys wanted, I mean, compared to the 'popular girls' at any institution. You know who I'm talking about, the ones that all the cool guys date. It's pretty obvious who I mean, and that particular group did not include me. I was different. They listened to rock and rap; I played golden oldies on my harp. Yeah, you heard me, my harp. I love the harp, don't get me wrong, but playing one sure didn't make me a guy magnet; let me set you straight on that. Whatever, you probably already knew that. You'll have to excuse me; sometimes my social isolation makes me seem a bit out of it.

Anyway, more about me. One reason I considered myself guy repellent was because I wore glasses. Not those cute trendy ones, either. Serious, science lady glasses. Sturdy rimmed, tortoiseshell ones that made me look even more serious and nerdy than I really was, if that was possible. Why didn't I change my style you ask? I don't know, maybe I liked looking all bookish and serious. That's the true me, actually. I hated anything fake; still do, so I guess my glasses were staying the way they were. Now, on to my clothes. I didn't wear the low cut tops or skinny jeans with boots that all the females around here wore. I just wasn't comfortable showing that much skin or advertising my shape, to be honest with you. I got that attitude from my mother, but that's a long story I don't feel like going into here. Let's just say I was fairly conservative and my clothes always reflected that. I always wore straight skirts with tights and orthopedic shoes. Yeah, that's right, orthopedic shoes. I also favored plaids and stripes. Are you hot yet? I paired my skirts with long sleeved blouses topped by cardigans. On special occasions, I ditched the skirt and paired the cardigan with a floral dress designed in the '50s. Your grandmother would have thought I dressed very well. Anyway, I liked my style; I just didn't like being a loner. But that was all about to change in a big way.

I had gone to the mailbox that morning to check for any messages from the University Administration Office, they like you to keep current with that and I always followed the rules. See where I'm going with this? I opened one of the envelopes, knowing full well what I would find. Some months earlier, the President of the college, Dr. Siebert (don't get me started on that guy!) had offered me a way to make a little extra money on the side. Hey, who doesn't like a little extra cash? Momma needs a new pair of orthopedic shoes, if you know what I mean. Anyway, he asked me if I would be willing to do some brain scanning and amateur therapy on some nut cases from the college who had tenure or were well known in the academic community. You know how it goes; they couldn't fire these wackadoodles without it being taken to court and splashed all over the news. That would have been bad publicity for the school. These weren't lowly adjunct professors, either, let me tell you that. Anyway, I hadn't seen any harm in doing a little work on the side so I, of course, said I would. They knew I wouldn't tell anyone anything. Who was I going to blab to, my shadow?

In the ensuing months I had diagnosed and treated a man with kleptomania, one woman with an unhealthy sexual attachment to her toothbrush (I kid you not. She even named the damn thing!), and an elderly professor emeritus who enjoyed sending pictures of his genitalia to female underclassmen on Instagram. Yeah, that was an interesting one! Anyway, I helped these poor souls with their 'problems' and got them back to as close to normal as they were ever going to be. I'm not sure what helped me in these endeavors more, my Doctorate in Neurobiology or my Masters in Psych. Anyway, when it had to be done on the QT, I was their go-to girl. I was pretty good at it, if I do say so myself. So, on this typical morning that would not stay typical, I opened yet another plain, brown envelope and just as I had expected, they had a side job for me.

Prelude - Sheldon

I am not crazy! My mother had me tested. How many times did I have to tell that simpleton, Siebert, that I was not in need of any mental health evaluations? My protests had done me little good. And that is how I got myself into the situation I'm in today. Siebert had felt justified in referring me to their in-house therapist and neurobiologist for a little brain scan and fine tuning. Good Lord, did I look like a madman? My only problem was that I was intensely frustrated. You would have been, also, if you had been forced to take a pause in your research to teach an applied physics class. TO UNDERCLASSMEN! Try finding a working brain among that bunch! Not an easy task let me tell you. All the male students were Neanderthal young men with their pants close to falling down to their ankles and whatever minds they possessed focused on nothing but coitus and the imbibing of alcoholic beverages. And added to that, I had to wet-nurse their female counterparts as well, who had nothing on their minds but the Kardashians and the mall, in that order. That was a particularly gruesome level of Hell, let me tell you. And then for Siebert to think there was something wrong with my brain? Ridiculous.

Anyway, I was put on administrative leave until I would be given a clean bill of mental health by the little tart that ran their neurobiology department, one Dr. Fowler. I hadn't known her personally, but I wouldn't have put it past Siebert to send me to someone he was sleeping with, just because it saved the school some money. A sacrilege, that's what it was, a sacrilege! I was their head theoretical physicist, and I had been reduced to helping a group of simpletons pass a basic physics class. The ignominy of it all still burns.

I do have my pride and my angst will be quite understandable once I explain to you exactly who and what I am and how I got there. Simply put, I am one of the finest scientific minds, if not the finest scientific mind, in all of North America. Or quite possibly, the world. After all, I was a certified child prodigy. I entered college at the age of eleven, graduated summa cum laude at the age of fourteen. I was also the youngest person in history to receive the Stevenson Award, being awarded that at fourteen, also. I earned my first doctorate when I was sixteen and my second when I was twenty. Somewhere in the middle of all that I also accepted a position as a visiting professor at the University of Heidelberg. I had even won Caltech's Chancellor's Award for Science and with my good friend, Leonard Hofstadter; I had published a paper comparing the universe to the surface of an Nth dimension sphere. That one received much critical acclaim and Leonard and I lectured on it for quite some time. That had been a nice feather in the professional cap for both of us. After that, Leonard and I wrote another paper that determined that space time contained the same properties as a super-fluid. That paper was endorsed by none other than Stephen Hawking.

So, as you can plainly see, I was quite accomplished and deserved much better respect and treatment than being sent to see some neuronut who was one step away from practicing soft science. What had I done to deserve this treatment? Nothing that I could see, but Dr. Siebert came up with the excuse that I had problems relating to people. That was a problem? They couldn't relate to me, either, and I didn't see him handing them an appointment slip to get their brains analyzed. He kept telling me that I was alienating my students and colleagues to some great degree. That was pure hokum! They were the ones alienating me! At that point, I really wished I could have retired from the human race permanently. But that would have meant giving up my research position and that was unthinkable! My life was research, which it still is. So, there I was, making my way to the lab of some hippy dippy brain therapist. Oh, the things I did for science!

How will these two hit it off? Will Sheldon be agreeable to working with Amy or will he be his usual self?