Sheldon Cooper's Law of Female-Video Game Dynamics clearly states that, should a physically attractive woman deign to play a video game, she will inevitably fail in a remarkably grand and embarrassing manner. It is a law the Dr. Sheldon Cooper, double PhD, had great faith in, despite its obscurity and controversial nature. This law was supported by a number of personal anecdotes, beginning with Sheldon's seventh birthday, his first encounter with such a phenomena.
It was his birthday, and in a departure from the usual disappointing nature of the day, someone had had the intelligence to give him an old Atari 5200 instead of a football or crossbow like everyone else. It was Missy's birthday too, of course, and she had a number of little girlfriends over to help celebrate it. She was at the stage where boys had 'cooties' and it was no longer cool to play outside with the little boys, but play dress up and house inside instead. Sheldon, grossly outnumbered by gleeful girls in princess costumes, had retreated to his room where he might play Space Invaders in peace. (Missy thought it unfair that he had an old 12" television in his room, that he had his own room at all, but her arguments had quickly subsided when their mother pointed out that Sheldon would be less likely to torture her Barbies 'in the name of Science' if he were otherwise occupied in his own space.)
He was analyzing the Atari controller, tutting at the poor design of the analog joystick, when the girl walked into his room. Occupied with his thoughts of how he might fix it with some springs he'd found in the garage, he didn't notice until she spoke.
"Wha'chyoo doin'?" she sign-songed, and he was startled enough to drop the controller. Sheldon felt a distressing heat in his face—was he getting feverish?—and though he tried, tried to say 'what are you doing in my room?' he could not open his mouth to respond, he could only stare. She was wearing a poorly fashioned pink dress, and a plastic tiara in her neatly combed, blond hair. Despite the garish nature of her face paint, everything about her screamed what one might call 'cute.'
Everything in him told him to avoid eye contact, to pick up his game controller and ignore her. Instead he couldn't tear his eyes away from her sparkling blue ones. Had the silence lasted any longer, she likely would have felt uncomfortable, would have left his room and gone back to her friends. Instead the space invaders won the battle, 'Game Over' flashed across the screen, and the robotic beeps drew the girls attention to the television.
"Ooh, can I play?" she asked. Rather than wait for a reply, she picked up the abandoned controller and sat herself in front of the screen. Sheldon quickly emerged from his vegetable-like stupor and protested vehemently.
"You can't do that!" he whined, "That's mine!" He attempted to wrestle the controller from her with no success, and felt helpless as he was forced to witness her incompetence, the success of the alien invasion. Her laser cannon moved in short jerks across the screen and was an easy target for the aliens as she made no move to hide under the protective cover. Was she even trying? There was no indication of such, as you'd think that even firing as haphazardly as she was, she might at least hit ONE of the aliens. All feelings of shyness now gone, he felt free to groan and criticize as she doomed the planet.
After a series of painful attempts, she gave up in frustration, throwing the poor controller to the ground and running out of his room crying. Sheldon, satisfied now that she was gone, picked up both the controller and the joystick that had broken off and was lying beside it. This would give him an opportunity to make that adjustment he was thinking about, he realized. Mother didn't approve when he took things apart to make them better, but it was "fair game" now that it was broken. The only thought he spared for the poor girl was to marvel at her incompetence. Having no previous experiences with which to compare it, he concluded that girls must simply be inherently bad at video games.
It was his eighth birthday when he came upon evidence contrary to that assumption. Sheldon had convinced his parents to take them all to Pizza Hut; where Missy and her friends could gorge themselves on greasy faux-Italian cuisine, and Sheldon could occupy himself with the arcade. He was looking forward to beating his personal best of 102,500 points on Donkey Kong. It was therefore a great disappointment to enter the arcade portion of the restaurant only to find that the Donkey Kong machine was already in use. Not easily dissuaded, he decided to approach and wait for the person to finish.
When he was able to see the screen, he was awed to discover that the boy had already reached Sheldon' own high score and had in fact surpassed it. He was further shocked to realize that, upon closer examination, the boy was not a boy at all.
The girl was in her preteens, possibly thirteen, and fate had delivered upon her an unfortunate affliction; acne. It was perhaps because of this one detraction to her physical features that the girl had let the rest of her appearance suffer so. Her hair hung in short greasy strands, she had not made any effort to cover her face in that 'make-up' that her peers favored so much, and her boyish clothes hung loosely in wrinkly, smelly abandon.
All of this registered only faintly in his mind at that moment, the majority of his thought processes were focused on analyzing and understanding the girl's skill. This could not be. Girls could not be good at video games. It went against the very nature of the world that he'd observed these past eight years.
As he tried to realign his vision of the universe and everything in it, the girl continued to rack up points by leaping over obstacles, destroying objects, and collecting items. Sheldon deduced that the girl had a cold that day, as she kept sniffling loudly. The grossly wet and grumbling sound caused his own nasal cavity to contract in disgusted sympathy. A few minutes into the observation session, she returned the filthy hand to the joystick after taking the time to make a long swipe at her snotty nose, and Sheldon physically recoiled.
Then suddenly she'd removed the final rivet, Donkey Kong had fallen, the Lady was saved, and the game was over. The girl left after documenting her high score—SHE was "The King?"—and Sheldon was staggered by her massive 238,600 total. His mind worked rapidly as he was forced to reconcile this event with his previously held world view...
Quickly Sheldon decided that it was only the PRETTY girls who completely sucked at video games.
When it was time to leave, his mother found found him still staring, distressed, at the Donkey Kong console. After The King's performance, Sheldon never could bring himself to touch that joystick—or any other public game console—again.
Sheldon would never put faith in a law based on so little evidence, of course. By his next birthday he knew it would be foolish to extrapolate something so vast from such a small pool of subjects. But after many years of similar observations, he felt it safe to believe that, nature or nurture, beautiful woman were incapable of achieving excellence in the field of video gaming. He had a few theories as to why, but the law stood by itself. All the females he'd encountered at gaming conventions and competitions had certainly done nothing to dispel this belief.
It might surprise others to know that, among other reasons, this law went a long way towards putting Sheldon off women entirely. Shallow as it may be, he could not bring himself to be physically attracted to someone... homely (he justifies this to himself by saying that the capability of his future progeny to find their own mates and pass on his DNA is of the utmost importance,) and he could not imagine having any sort of personal relationship (other than that of those related by blood, he admits) with anyone so terrible at playing video games. It would simply not be worth the exhaustive effort it takes to create and maintain such a relationship.
So it is a momentous occasion indeed, when, years down the road, his new neighbor, Penny, blows all of his ideas about female-video game interaction completely out of the water.
A/N: I consider this pre-Sheldon/Penny, but feel free to ignore any shippy undertones. This is definitely a one-shot. I wrote it a while ago thinking I might eventually continue it, but I have so many writing projects I've started but will never finish that I'm quite sure this is it. Hope you enjoyed it, nevertheless. :)