The Four Stages

AN: I know. Third installment, 2nd chapter. "WTF?!" right? The explanation can be found in the first or third chapter's author's notes. I hope this didn't confuse you guys too much! This is the second stage in the four stages of saying 'I love you' as described by Ted Mosby from How I Met Your Mother. This scene takes place sometime after "The Gorilla Experiment".

AN 2: And yes, I do believe Penny owns at least one season of Gilmore Girls on DVD. :P

2. You Think You Know It

"Ugh! I just can't get this!!" Penny threw up her hands exasperated.

"Yes, you can! You'll get it. Now, let's try again," Leonard turned back to the drawing in front of them. He pointed to the circle. "This is the football."

"It doesn't look like a football."

"Well, it's physics. We model it as a uniform sphere to make it simpler."

"Why?"

"Because if we use the actual dimensions of a football the math will come out to be several pages long instead of just a few lines." Penny blinked a few times.

"Okay, so that's a football." Leonard smiled.

"Yep! And the football is traveling down the field along this arc," he traced the curve with his finger, "at 6 meters per second in this direction." He drew an arrow going from the ball up towards the right at a diagonal. "And that angle is 30 degrees. Now, what you're trying to figure out is how long it will take for the ball to move 50 meters down the field. So what are you going to do first?"

Penny stared at the paper blankly. "Uuuummmmmmmmm...." She couldn't think of what the first step should be. Which was incredibly annoying because she knew Leonard had just shown her how to solve these kinds of problems not 15 minutes ago. Come on, you can do this. Now think! What was it that Leonard had said about objects moving in 2 directions? Penny couldn't for the life of her remember. It seemed the harder she thought about it, the more uncertain she got, which was making her more and more frustrated.

"Okay, this ball is moving up and to the right." Leonard stated patiently.

"Uh, huh...."

"And you're trying to solve for the x-direction," Leonard continued, tracing the length of the field.

Penny continued to stare at the paper, confused. She was completely and utterly lost. Tears were starting to prick at her eyes which irritated her further. She did NOT want to cry about this. Especially not in front of Leonard.

"So you have two directions and you're only concerned with one of them. What do you do?"

"I don' t know!" Penny finally exclaimed.

"Yes, you do," Leonard said calmly.

"No! No, I don't! Because I'm stupid, and I'm never, ever going to understand this stuff!" She flopped back on the couch and crossed her arms. A stray tear or two started to fall, and she hastily swiped at them. Damn tears.

Leonard watched her thoughtfully for a moment. Then he simply said, "Okay," and stood up.

"Okay?" Penny gave him an incredulous look.

"Yes, okay. I know what you need." He picked up a DVD box set and held it up for her to see.

"Gilmore Girls? Oh, great! You've given up on me too!" Penny slid further down on the couch.

"No! You need something to clear your head. So we'll watch an episode of Gilmore Girls, and then we'll go back and tackle the football problem. I bet you anything, you'll be able to solve it right away."

Penny gave him a half-smile. "Tackle the football problem?"

"Yeah, I said that on purpose. Did you like it?"

Penny's smile widened. "So wait, you're really going to watch Gilmore Girls with me? I thought you didn't like that show."

"Well, it's not so much that I don't like it," Leonard answered, placing a disc in to the DVD player. "It's more I don't understand it. Seriously, I think the characters speak a different language sometimes." Penny giggled.

"You just don't get all the pop culture references."

"Not at all," Leonard shook his head as he joined her on the couch. She scooted so she could curl up beside him and rest her head on his shoulder.

"So you really think I'll figure out that physics problem?"

"Shhh, just watch the show."

*** 50 Minutes Later ***

"And 50 divided by 5.196," Penny muttered as she entered it into the calculator, "and the answer is ... 9.6 seconds!" She looked over at Leonard hopefully. He grinned.

"Yep! That's right!" He said brightly.

Penny jaw dropped open. "Seriously? I got it right?"

"Yeah, you did." Leonard nodded.

"Oh my god!" Penny crushed him in a huge hug. "I can't believe it! Did you see? I even used those triangle sign things without having to ask for your help!"

"Trig functions," Leonard automatically corrected. "And yeah, I did!" He gave her kiss. "I told you you could do it."

"Man, that was so much easier than I thought it was. How did you know I needed to watch Gilmore Girls?" Penny asked.

Leonard shrugged. "Well, I could tell you were getting frustrated, and I know when I get frustrated it's better if I focus on something else for a bit. Then when I go back to the original problem, it usually makes a lot more sense."

"So you get frustrated by problems too, still?"

"Oh, yeah! All the time."

Penny nodded thoughtfully for a moment. Then she broke out in a big grin. "I solved a physics problem!" Leonard laughed.

"Yes, you did," he said proudly.

Still grinning, Penny leaned in to kiss him.

"Thank you, Leonard."