Companion piece to "The Double Date Aftermath", what happened to Penny? Penny starts her new job in Nebraska.
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The letter of recommendation from the Cheesecake Factory helped Penny get a job at the community college Coffee Shop.
Day 1. "Hello there Cowboy, I'm Penny, what can I get you to drink?"
Day 2. "Hi there Cowboy, coffee or tea to drink?"
Day 3. "Good afternoon Cowboy, another coffee today?"
Day 4. "The Cowboy is here, what is it today?"
Day 5. "It's Friday Cowboy, another cappuccino?"
"Excuse me Penny, why do you keep calling me Cowboy."
"Because you look like a Cowboy."
"I'm not a Cowboy, I'm a Physicist."
"You don't look like a Physicist?"
"What makes you an expert on Physicists? Thanks for the coffee."
Half an hour later Penny is sat in a booth with a cup of coffee and a sandwich.
"Excuse me Penny."
"Hello Cowboy, I mean hello Physicist."
"Hello Penny, my name is James."
"Can I help you, although I am on a break at the moment."
"May I talk to you, I don't need any more coffee just yet."
"Sure, please sit down James the Physicist."
"I teach Physics at the community college. Outside the college I don't know anyone who even knows what a Physicist is and yet you think that I don't look like one."
"I used to live in California and my neighbours were Physicists, wonderful people but they didn't look like you. They were skinny pasty faced guys who wore superhero and science fiction t-shirts. They didn't look like cowboys."
"Well I like to ride horses so I dress appropriately. I can see how you might think that I don't look like a Physicist. I was a grad student at Berkeley and a lot of my colleagues dressed like your California friends."
"Did you enjoy California?"
"I hated it. I am a Nebraska native who was top of his class in Physics at the University of Nebraska. After I graduated I was encouraged to study for a Ph.D at Berkeley, I went from being a big fish in a small pond to a minnow in a shark infested ocean. After six months I couldn't stand it any more, I came home to good old Nebraska and I was able to restart my Ph.D here. After I got my Ph.D they encouraged me to go away again for postdoctoral work but I didn't want to leave Nebraska. So I got a job teaching here, life is good."
"I am glad to be back home in Nebraska, I went to California to try and be an actor but that didn't work out. After 5 years I had had enough and here I am."
"So where were you in California Penny?"
"Pasadena."
"Oh yes, Caltech."
"That's right, my friends worked at Caltech as Physicists. Leonard and Sheldon's ideas of a good time were paintball, Star Trek and comic books. No horse riding."
"Your Caltech friend Leonard, is his surname Hofstadter, Dr. Leonard Hofstadter?"
"That's right, do you know him?"
"No but a lot of my Ph.D work was based on some of his research."
"Small world James, what do you research on now?"
"I don't research any more, I did enough to get my Ph.D but now I teach, a lot more fun than research."
"Well I had better get back to work, a pleasure to meet a horse riding Physicist, you should come out to the family farm some time and ride some of our horses."
So we meet James, a Physicist but not like Leonard or Sheldon.
