Liza Kollman was super excited to write this guest post on The Big Bang Theory – currently the main reason she gets absolutely nothing done on Thursday nights.

Funnily enough, I discovered The Big Bang Theory through music. I’ve always been a huge Bare Naked Ladies fan, and I was cruising around their site one day when I saw the link to the single they’d put out for The Big Bang Theory’s theme song. The link took me to YouTube, and the video showed me scenes of the show itself. I’d never picked up a show from the opening credits before, but something about Sheldon and his pals in those opening title sequences made me reach for my TV Guide. Yes, I know the irony of using a website to get to YouTube, and then reaching for the TV Guide instead of just clicking on ANOTHER website to tell me when to tune in. But that’s how it happened, anyway.

The Big Bang Theory happened to be in reruns when I heard the song, because it was summer time. Luckily enough, at least in the Great State of Minnesota, that meant The Big Bang Theory was on five times a week. At least. And since it was summer time, well, I guess I didn’t have that much else to do. I settled in and started watching.

From the very first episode, Sheldon and Leonard reminded me of two of my best friends in High School. I’m pretty sure those guys don’t have their PhD’s today, but they are certainly smart enough to. It was that social awkwardness that really did it for me, and that really made me fall in love with the show. It was like tuning in to watch my friends – whom I really haven’t spoken to in ages – every single week.

The hook though was the comedy. The show is brilliantly written, and the comedy is refreshing because it is smart comedy, which you really can’t say about a lot of television now-a-days. Most of the time, joke are all about sex, getting drunk, or being stupid. Ok, that argument doesn’t really hold water because The Big Bang Theory has its share of those types of jokes too, but something is different about them. I really do think it is the smartness factor of the writing. It is almost as hard to write smart as it is to be smart now-a-days, so I really think the writers of this show are on to something.

The reason I keep watching, though, is that at heart, I’m just the dork who is always searching for that happy ending. I might not fit in to every situation, and I might not know how to talk to most of the people around me. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a pot-of-gold situation waiting for me. If Sheldon and Leonard and the other guys can get theirs, I most certainly can get mine. I think that’s what keeps me tuning in week after week, and season after season.

My take on Sheldon Cooper’s childhood comes from many hours of watching the show, reading about his life, and my own history with conservative fundamentalism, which I find kinda funny.

The East of Texas. The Gulf Coast. Hot heat, dry winds, and revival tents. Not the place you’d expect someone with an IQ of 187 to grow up. Sheldon didn’t expect it either. Neither did his mother. In the world where Sheldon was born, church was the utmost important. And part of church was knowing what you’d been told was true was actually true – without question.

Sheldon’s hell of a childhood began very early on. His mother put him into the Christian school in his town. A “good little school,” as she called it. It was good – if you were white, pretty dumb, and willing to believe whatever you were told. From the very beginning, he hated it. He’d go to the library whenever he could get his mom to drive him there and check out books on science. His mom sat back in the stacks, reading through different translations of the Bible, so she never noticed what he was reading. Not that she read any other languages, but she liked to read what the English translations SAID were in the other language translations. When it was time to go home, he’d just throw a Young People’s Guide To the Bible on top of the other books he was getting, and she’d never notice. That way, Sheldon was able to learn about science, even at home.

He was done with the whole school thing by the age of 10, basically because the school she’d put him in wasn’t anywhere he could actually thrive. It was one of those uber conservative Christian schools where Sheldon and his classmates watched videos of humans and dinosaurs co-existing, and practiced “rapture drills” in which they talked about what to do when those four horsemen came on-up-and-at-em out of the sky. Sheldon knew he was done with the place when he was attempting to finish up the 6th grade as a six year old. The boy next to him startled at the sound of a freight train two blocks down and grasped the side of his desk. “Its the rapture, its the rapture!” the kid cried out. Sheldon was six. Just six years old. But he knew it was ridiculous.

Sheldon also knew he was in trouble when he told his mom about the same instance later on, over a dinner of mashed potatoes and fried chicken. Which Sheldon ALSO hated. His mother put down her fork and said, very sternly, “Sheldon, don’t you DARE make fun of those who believe. Otherwise one of these times it won’t be a train but the actual rapture, and you’ll be left behind.”

She continued his hell of a religious education in the summers, totting him from one small town to another for her religious revivals. Which really weren’t so bad, when he was young, because Sheldon got to run around half crazy with the other kids. As long as he kept his brains to himself, that was. Because those other kids weren’t anything like him.

At least his mom was smart enough to let him go to college when he turned 11. By that time, she was so frustrated with his refusal to believe what he was told that she figured once he got college out of the way, maybe he could settle down and do something with his life – like become a preacher – put that good smart brain to use memorizing the gospel. Deep down she knew he probably wouldn’t,
but she figured it was worth a try. She at least wanted him to take a few classes on Creationism, so that he could get his facts straight, but alas the school he went to simply didn’t offer them. So he didn’t. Got his PhD when he was 16, and never looked back.

Once he was far enough away, his relationship with his mom actually got a little stronger. Mostly because when he was gone, she could pretend that he was going to church as he should. He promised her he’d go to church once a year, and she promised him she’d pray for him. So it goes, with these folks.