A Personal Meditation

by Magnet-Rose

He was a prodigy. A thinker more than a feeler. His world is defined by logic and ideas. But how did it all come about, how did he go from a bright-eyed child to an frightfully smart man? Here we meditate on the subject of Sheldon Lee Cooper, a man who knows more than he should, but never feels like it's enough. A man who aims to be the smartest in the world.

a.n.: Just playing with some ideas.

-A PERSONAL MEDITATION ON THE LIFE OF SHELDON LEE COOPER-

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Self-control.

It was a simple phrase. It was also the God of Sheldon Lee Cooper's universe. As a child he had the normal routines of his parents to dictate his life. Wake up at 6 a.m. Breakfast. School Lunch. More School. Home. Dinner. Bed by 8 p.m. Rinse, Repeat. At a fairly young age, Sheldon knew he was more intelligent than the majority if not all of the other children his age. It was confusing at first when he could do more than others, quicker, faster. His uncle on his father's side, may he rest in peace, found this to be fascinating and was the first one to introduce him to the superhuman people of the comic book world.

"You're like one of them superheros, all smart and stuff." his uncle had at one of his and Missy's birthday's given him a small collection of comics about the superhero Flash. Sheldon had a pretty active imagination just like any of the other kids his age and liked to imagine himself as one of these superheroes. Strong. Fast. Needed. Important. Sheldon wanted to important.

The children around him from kindergarten up through third grade never really saw the potential that Sheldon, even a that age, saw in himself. A few teachers, at the beginning, cooed over his intelligence, his speed at learning new concepts and his ability to repeat complex ideas back at them with only a try or two. In the end though, they were tired of him. Tired of having to create new curriculum for the frightfully intelligent boy and accommodate his sharp mouth. Even after a specialist visited the school and they put a name, an eidetic memory, to the power of his mind, they didn't seem to even want to deal with him.

For the most part the other kids left him alone. There were some friendly ones, some not so much, but over all his first few years of grade school passed uneventfully. By the time fourth grade rolled around that all changed. These days, one of the few things the Sheldon Cooper wanted forget entirely was a day a couple weeks into the fourth grade when everything changed.

Sheldon never had to put much thought into his actions. He was very self-assured and even a bit on the extroverted side of things. Though to this day his sister insists that he's a born introvert. When he talked there were laser sharp ideas behind his words, and a bit of careless abandon when it came to tact. He honestly doesn't remember what he said or what they said at the beginning, but 9-year-old Sheldon remembers the first fist in his face. He remembers the blood streaming out of his nose and feeling hot concrete digging into his palms. He remembers the laughter the most. Mean and spiteful, it was. They got a few more kicks and punches in before a teacher saw and came running.

Soon after that the whispering began. Or maybe it had always been there and he was only now noticing it.

Teacher's pet, they called him. Suck up. Loud mouth. Freak

Sheldon wasn't much of a crier. He cried when his mother took him to the hospital, he cried when he was chased up a tree by a stupid chicken. Later he would cry when his uncle died. But that was it. Small scrapes or not getting his way and any other reason that children cry, he didn't. His MeeMaw said he was a good boy because of that. So when the names began circling him like rabid sharks he sucked in his breath, held his head high even though his chest hurt and his eyes wanted to sting. What few fragile friendships he had at that point ceased and he was alone at school. With his brother off in another school and Missy involved with lots of her friends, he oftentimes went to stay with his grandmother after school because he stopped wanting to hear the increasing arguments between his parents or listen as his father killed his liver with alcohol.

It was then that he found the library. Sure he'd been there lots of times with his family or because of school, but never had he really stopped to look at all the things a library contained. He remembers looking at some of the kids bookshelves only to turn around and see the much more imposing shelves of the adult non-fiction section. He remembers walking through the first row, running his fingers over the bindings of hundreds of books about computers. He chose one at random. It was a book about a programming language called Pascal. He chose another a few minutes late about computational science.

And so began the rise of Sheldon Cooper.

Everyday after school he stopped by the library with a dictionary in one hand and a ravenous hunger for learning in the other. Sheldon memorized the Dewey Decimal System in less than an hour and with that he began at 000: Computer Systems, Knowledge, and Systems. He skipped books that became increasingly redundant, moving faster and faster through the books. He took a week off going through the Dewey system numerically to learn all the stuff he needed to about his fourth grade curriculum. That way he could spend the maximum amount of his free time on his new passion.

By winter break he had devoured 000-099 – Computer science, information & general works,100-199 – Philosophy, parapsychology and occultism & psychology, 200-299 – Religion, 300-399 – Social sciences, and 400-499 – Language. Even with his eidetic memory he didn't retain 100% of it but he could have detailed, well thought out conversations with just about anyone on the subjects. He kept his MeeMaw on her toes by talking up everything she did or thought. His MeeMaw loved it. He didn't know this at the time, but later he learned that she had been falling into a steady depression after the death of his grandfather, his Papaw.[1] The almost daily visits of her young grandchild revitalized her life and she adored Sheldon for shining light on the chasm left by her husband's death.

Winter break arrived at just the right time. The next set of Dewey Decimals was in Science. Even the limited science that they did in grade school was enough to keep Sheldon entertained, but it never felt like enough. When he had first begun working his way through the library he almost wanted to start with Science and then other things, but increasingly he was determined to do everything in the right order. He latched onto his modest childhood schedule and knowing that the schedule was always going to be there he felt comfortable navigating his life with his nose firmly planted in a book. He was now a child who was thirsty for knowledge of everything, so uncertainties were becoming a thing of the past. The more he read, the more he saw. He made connections between people, their thoughts, and their actions. He began to predict outcomes in behavior from people. He was beginning to understand the ideas the drove the human race and the natural world. The dark places in the corridors of life itself were being brightened. He was a child with a candle in the dark, driving away the fear of ignorance and superstition. It was in this that he felt the most powerful. But... as the arid winter of Texas took hold, his uncle abruptly passed away. A death that would set the tone for much of Sheldon's life from there on out.

With a book from the library about Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity he walked hand in hand with his grandmother at the funeral of his uncle. He heard the low tones of commiseration and sobs of loss,but under it all he heard the same idea repeated: He had so much potentional, so much going for him, if it weren't for the fact that he had no self-control. He was diagnosed with lung cancer at the early age of 35, and was probably was close to drinking himself to death on top of that. He always boasted, with a new woman attached to his arm every week, that he would quit drinking, quit smoking and make something of himself in the music world. He never did, and died working as a door to door salesman with nothing more in his pocket then a small amount in his savings and even less in his life.

In his will, he left Sheldon his entire comic book collection, a few VHS box sets of some old science fiction television shows, and strangely, at least to the executor of the will, his meager Bachelor's diploma from Galveston College. On it was a handwritten note.

Don't let the man get you down, kiddo. Make something great out of yourself. I know you can do it. - Uncle C.

Sheldon did cry, but in the privacy of the funeral home's restroom. He didn't want his parents and the other mourners to think he had lost control of himself.

By the end of his fourth grade year he had read every book in the library's non-fiction section and was planning something big. With no amount of humility or holding back he drove himself to become acknowledged as one of the smartest people in Texas. He told only one person what he planned. His MeeMaw. She was there the whole time, helping him get access to sign-up sheets for the SAT, the GED, and the GRE. In two days he burned through those tests with a fiery passion.

He was going to be big. He was going to be the smartest person in Texas... no, the world. Once he told his parents what he planned to do it was only a matter of time before he was considered a high-school graduate equivalent despite never having set foot into a single high-school. Within a few months he was given some honors and the mayor of Galveston even gave him an award for high academic success. It didn't stop there. He applied, with his MeeMaw's help, to multiple universities around the country. His mother put her foot down at letting him leave the country so a little after he turned 11 he was enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin.

During his stay he excelled, surpassed, and dumbfounded he fellow students and teachers. With such a wide age gap and little experience dealing adults other than a few family members he stuck to himself and studied. He ceased to care what other people did around him as long as they didn't interfere with his master plan to graduate by fifteen. His social life was non-existent, but his mind was dancing around in a crowded waltz with the important questions of life, the universe, and everything. He ended up surpassing his own expectations of himself and graduated by the time he was fourteen.

His father died three days before the graduation ceremony. Sheldon didn't cry, even when his mother tried to tell him that his father had said, for the first time in his whole life that he was proud. He graduated summa cum laude and when the news broke around the academic world he was offered positions from at least one college or university in every country around the world. He somehow managed to convince his mother to let him go to the one in Germany, despite how much she didn't want her youngest son to leave.

He has his first significant experience with the opposite sex while working on his Ph.D. in Germany. The daughter of one of his mentors was always hanging around, she was a few years older than him, oozed sex appeal and didn't speak a word of English.

One of the other professors in his department took him aside and left him with a little warning. The old guy was a little bitter about life, having just come out of a bad marriage with only a few coins and a bitter constitution to his name. "Careful there, that one there is a man-killer." He said in reference to the daughter of his mentor. "Trophy taker of men's hearts and souls. Women always know how to stab a man right where it hurts. I know! If she ever tried to take a dip into your soul tread wisely! Get a little you-know-what out of it and then hit the road with your peace of mind intact and little pleasure to make the sleep come easier."

"If you say so." Sheldon said with some doubt to the old guy's statements. He wasn't stupid about the relationships between men and women. He had read the whole library after all. You could say he had a sort of clinical distance from the subject of men, women, sex and the whole circus. But he knew the basics of it all. Whatever interest he had in women was scientific. At least that's what he led himself to believe.

One of the Sheldon's students was actively trying to get into the pants of his mentor's daughter. Anja would have none of it and instead her visits to Sheldon's classroom revolved around Sheldon and Sheldon alone.

"I don't really understand why she thinks I'll be interested in her." Sheldon had said one day while sittin in his office with a couple of his regular students. Professional distance aside, Sheldon had enjoyed his regular visitors, they were a strange but comfortable break from the tedious work he was doing to acquire his Ph.D.

"It's because you act like you don't care. Women love that!" Said one of the two.

"I don't care." Sheldon said, ever more perplexed by that idea.

"Ha! Keep that attitude up and you'll have you a mistress soon enough. And if you really don't care then that will save you from the hardship of a breakup." They all chuckled at that, but Sheldon was still uncertain why his lack of caring was so attractive.

The old bitter professor had an insight to this. "You're a challenge, boy-o. The prize at the end of a race track. But that kind of girl, that's all she wants in the challenge. Once she's had you, you're defeated and no longer a challenge. The prize is won and it's time to move on to the next."

He called it an experiment, but really he was tired of the guys in his class and his fellow professors calling him the "little virgin boy" behind his back like he couldn't hear. He let Anja "win" him over and he allowed himself to engage in intercourse. He was painfully inexperienced and that seemed to frustrate Anja in the end. Their fling lasted the whole of a week before he wrote the whole experience off as a success when he heard down the grape-vine that she was chasing tail in another department. He didn't feel like it was all that great, pleasurable sure, but really it lent nothing to his passions. The so called ecstasy of sex paled in comparison to the ecstasy of the universe and it's secrets. In the end, it was something to write off the old bucket list, and he moved on. His colleagues quickly lost interest in his sex life after that. There was nothing really to make fun of any more.

He graduated at sixteen. Ph.D. in hand he returned to the States and jumped right into another dissertation. The next few years were taken up with adding more letters to the end of his title. He spent much of this time with his MeeMaw where she began teaching him about medicine "just in case the whole science thing didn't work out." During his year in Germany and the following years finishing up his second dissertation in Texas he worked to finalize the master plan to be comepletely self-controlled.

Logic dictated everything. He held all things up to that standard and because of that tended to not understand things like sarcasm or jokes. He knew his MeeMaw well so he knew when she was joking and always laughed at them even when he didn't think they were funny. At around 22 he started to University hop. Working as a guest researcher or lecturer for a year or so but never for very long. It wasn't until California Tech offered him a permanent position as a theoretical physics researcher that he said goodbye to traveling by train from city to city and settled into a new life of peace and order while he began to work on string theory.

Initially he lived with one of the elderly physics professors, using the spare bed and bath, but he knew that he needed a place to himself. A place to set roots and have a consistent schedule and always know what was going on around him, where later, roommates would come and go like leaves in the wind, something that Sheldon denies to this day made him sad.

When Sheldon found that place he felt like life was perfect. He knew that he was odd to the people around him, but he ceased to care what they thought and contented himself with knowing that they were just awed by his uniqueness and intelligence. He considered the whole thing a grand experiment to see just how much the people around him could take. How much work they would do to accommodate him? It was also kind of a grand joke. A playful game that only he knew about. It made him laugh on the inside.

After a dozen or so roommates had come and gone Leonard Hofstadter appeared and he has so far lasted the longest. He was followed by Howard Wolowitz and Rajesh Koothrapalli. A couple years later Penny moved in across the hall. Later Bernadette and Amy joined the picture and it was close to perfect.

The utterly self-controlled life of Sheldon Lee Cooper was perfect.

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El Fin...(or is it?)

Debating on turning this into a shipping story. With whom? Who knows. I let this rest until then.

[1] For those of you unfamiliar with Southern American English slang, Papaw is the grandfather's variant of Meemaw.