He wasn't actually born at a K-Mart, no matter how many times his mother told people that. True, she'd gone into labor there. Her water broke while she was standing in line buying enough twine to secure a fully grown deer to the roof of their station wagon. It didn't take long for her contractions to become regular, but she made it to the delivery ward in the nick of time. Though the delivering doctor joked that she almost had twins right there in the supermarket, Melissa Lynn and Sheldon Lee Cooper were born at Lawrence Memorial in Galveston, Texas.
Missy was always smiling. Her mother would tell the other women in her prayer group that her baby girl was a genius because she was smiling from day one. Her daughter had bright, sharp eyes and Mary could swear she knew everything that was going on around her. Shelly, on the other hand, was a crier. He didn't like to be held, he didn't like to be kissed, he was particular about where and when he ate and he was so still when he slept, Mary thought several times that he up and died in the middle of the night when she first took him home. Their father, George, always took to little Missy, but he told everyone that Sheldon was Mary's son. Neither parent thought much would come of Shelly, but Mary prayed to Jesus for his soul.
She noticed something was different about Sheldon when he was four months old. She'd just given the twins a bath and she could've sworn Shelly said the word "cold". He was lying there on his towel naked as a jay bird shivering when he said it again. She knew he definitely said it that time, and she ran with Shelly in her arms to George and told him that his son just said his first word. George told Mary that was unpossible and that the neighbors' son, Buck, was two and still ain't said a word. But Sheldon proved his father wrong. By the time Sheldon was six months old, he had a vocabulary of thirty-seven words. By the time he was seven months old, he knew over three hundred words. And by the time he was one year old, Sheldon could read at a second grade level and was able ask Buck why he was such a big fat stupid head. Missy didn't say her first word until she was nineteen months old.
When the twins were toddlers, Missy would jump into the sandbox at the playground and immediately start talking to the other kids. Shelly didn't like getting dirty. He would avoid the sand and he would avoid the other children. Once, when the twins were three, their mother told Sheldon to go play with the other kids and he would just frown at her and tell her that he didn't want to get sick, especially not after he saw what was pouring out of Jeremy Fisher's nose. Mary told her son to get over it and go play with the other kids. Two days later, Sheldon was in the hospital with pneumonia.
He was four when his parents found out that he was asthmatic. George refused to believe that his son needed an inhaler and told Mary that enough time in pre-peewee football was all it took to cure that crap. One week after joining the local pre-peewee team, Sheldon ended up with a broken arm because Buck didn't know what "no tackling" meant. Afterward, Shelly was signed up for little league baseball, but his father gave up after Sheldon landed in the hospital with a concussion because Buck didn't know what "no throwing baseballs at other kids' heads" meant. George had given up on Sheldon and sports and instead hoped that Sheldon's older brother would more than make up for his younger son's wussiness.
Although his parents were at a loss in how to deal with their genius son, Sheldon took refuge in the fact that Memaw appreciated his intellect. When he turned four and his mother bought him The Cat in the Hat for his birthday, Memaw bought him Janice VanCleave's Physics for Every Kid: 101 Easy Experiments in Motion, Heat, Light, Machines, and Sound. When his dad made him watch the Oilers on Monday Night Football, Memaw would let him watch Nova on PBS. When his brother would give him an Indian sunburn or his sister would bite him, Memaw be there with a cup of hot herbal tea, a teaspoon of honey, and a hug. And for some reason, Sheldon didn't mind Memaw's hugs. She radiated love and warmth and caring and no matter what kind of mood he was in, Memaw would always make him smile.
It was his special love for his Memaw that grounded him, kept him a little bit human and he carried that seed of humanity she planted in him to this day.