"Sooo... What was Leonard like when he was little?"

"He's still little."

Penny sighed, she should have known better.

"What was Leonard like when he was, let's go with 10. Had he let go of his penis yet?"

"He was in the latency stage at that point so, yes."

"What was he like other than that?"

"Insufferable," Cassandra sighed as though it were a painful memory, "That was the age when he built the 'hugging machine'. On several occasions I tried to turn it into a 'little brother throttling machine'."

"Was he really that bad? My brothers were terrible. They were always going through my things, breaking my stuff, telling my friends EVERYTHING!"

"Leonard had just realized around that time that he was unusually intelligent and that our family was, for lack of a better word, unusual. He was a monster until puberty kicked in and his self-esteem came crashing down."

"Well, he built a hugging machine... He might have been kind of..." fucked up? damaged? emotionally neglected? "sad at that age."

Cassandra groaned, "He informed our mother that her complete lack of 'maternal instinct' or 'warmth' was debilitating to his growth intellectually and physically. You can imagine how hurt she was by his thesis."

"Thesis?"

"Twelve pages on her maternal inadequacies! I know he was only ten, but the research was haphazard and he cited come dubious sources."

Penny thought maybe she should try her hand at screen writing again. This was some golden material, she just needed to decide if it would be a comedy or drama.

"So he really hurt your mother's feelings?" Penny tried to imagine Beverly Hofstadter being sad and could not. Then she tried to imagine her being happy with no more success.

"She never said as much or showed it in her behavior or facial expressions but I noticed a certain listlessness in her work that year. And how was Leonard reprimanded for his callous behavior? They bought him a dog, Mitzy. The only pets I ever had were mother's lab rats and I was only allowed to pet them if it was prudent to the study."

"I can't believe he actually wrote a 12 page paper about your mother..."

"He actually quoted some research, including his own, regarding growth and nurturing and said he would be lucky to hit 5'6 in his current environment. Then the little bastard stalled out at 5'5!"

"Um... you know he didn't stop growing just to upset your mother... right?"

Cassandra raised her eyebrows at Penny. Penny wasn't sure if that was supposed to be a yes or a no.