My Life is an Episode of The Big Bang Theory

OK we love Sheldon, Leonard, Raj, Howard (yes even Howard), Penny, Bernadette and Amy. Nope don’t like Pria not one rupee. Not because she replaced Penny in Leonard’s affection, but because quite frankly, she is an insecure bitch. Listen when I first started dating my husband an old girlfriend of his used to call to say hello. I had no problem with it. I talked to her and was very friendly. I knew quite frankly that my future hubby adored me and that noone was going to come between us. (Yes, after awhile the old girlfriend did stop calling too.) I do tell the boys that if you are dating someone who is so insecure in your relationship, you need to get rid of them. They should trust you. Trust is a major component of any relationship and if there is none there, there is no basis to move forward-hormonal attraction notwithstanding. But I digress…

So anyway, we continually watch The Big Bang Theory reruns. We have all the seasons on disc and when we can’t find anything else to watch, which even though we have 1000 TV channels is really most of the time, we resort to TBBT. We have our favorite episodes of course…the first season when Penny gives Sheldon the napkin with Leonard Nimoy’s DNA. The time Sheldon couldn’t figure out the graphene wave and hid in the children’s ball pit. All the episodes with Sheldon and Leonard’s mothers (two very fine comedic actresses). Sheldon and Amy’s rather unusual relationship. I also like the growth of the characters in the show, especially the Penny Posse. I like that Penny has gone from valley Nebraska girl to being friends with the kids from the nerd table. I like that Amy has developed some sort of social life and Bernadette, is just so freakin’ adorable.

My boys actually see themselves in the characters. Well they see themselves in Sheldon. CM1 has taken to knocking three times whenever he wants to enter a room. CM2 is anal retentive when it comes to language and correcting everybody. (Honestly that’s not an emulation of Sheldon that is really just how he is.) CM2 is also very didactic, and if you talk about computer games, watch out. He may not like physics in the theoretical sense, but he certainly won’t let anything he considers to be ill-information pass as unredressed. CM1 also seems to like to sit in a certain spot and reminds everyone where that spot is. CM1 also, like Sheldon, cannot let an idea go without resolving the problem. His latest Holocaust class may be over, but woe to anyone who doesn’t want to discuss man’s inhumanity to man.

I am not sure when my life actually morphed into a TV sitcom, but I can tell you that we definitely live there. Last night at dinner CM1 brought up the subject of gamma rays and Bruce Banner. How it is totally illogical and wanted to know just what was Stan Lee thinking? Apparently gamma rays in any true amount would not have changed Banner into the Hulk, it would have melted all his internal organs. We did try to explain to him, that Stan Lee probably just picked some scientific idea out of thin air and applied it to a comic book hero. That is all. He could have just as easily picked x-ray rays or neutrinos. Hulk agreed…Moving on….

The we started discussing…you guessed it… Spock. “Live, long and prosper,” to be exact. The boys kept seeing who could make the Vulcan symbol the best. CM1 could only do it with his left hand. I could do it with my left hand too, just not so easy with my right. CM2 was ambidextrous and hubby couldn’t do it at all. I then regaled the boys with the story about how they came up with the sign in the first place. (Yes, I am a huge Start Trek geek and do know this one by heart.) Leonard Nimoy, being Jewish, knew of a symbol that the rabbis used to bless the congregation when the Torah was removed from the Ark on everyday but Saturday. The rabbi would make a hand gesture in the shape of the Hebrew letter shin, which is the first letter in the word shadai (another name for God). So that’s where the Vulcan symbol of peace comes from. OK, cool. Not bad. The boys were impressed. Moving on….

CM2 piped up with his own comicbook story issues…this time about Spiderman and Mary Jane. Apparently at some time in the storyline, Spiderman and Mary Jane are married. But in order to save his aunt’s life, Spiderman had to give up his marriage to Mary Jane. CM2 was annoyed because he thought the storyline stupid. That it was used only as a “theatrical device” (his words) to get them to break-up to continue the story of Spiderman. Something more about evil corporate greed and the underhanded manipulation of society.

He is in college afterall and that is the point in your life, you have to believe in the “evils” of corporations and capitalism. Of course as with most college students he doesn’t work in the reality that if he didn’t have money he wouldn’t have an education, computer or video games, never mind food, clothing, shelter, doctors…well you get the idea.  Of course we do fix that little bit of oversight regularly….Heaven forbid we could have escaped this developmental stage of cynicism, knowing-it-allness and taking to heart too much of the unrealistic, illogical, economically unsustainable  crap he is fed  in school. As I have mentioned before, the easy part of development we don’t get, the stupidity that gets picked up by kids, that we get to deal with.

I mentioned that Aunt May would probably be glad to have died if she knew that her living would have ruined Spiderman’s chance for happiness. Hubby chimed in that the choice wasn’t Aunt May’s but Spiderman’s. CM1 was annoyed that we weren’t talking about the Hulk anymore. CM2 got really mad because we weren’t actually discussing his theory of dishonest comicbook writing and manipulation of comicbook readers. He was additionally insulted that anyone would use so transparent a  writing technique.

The interesting part of the conversation is how hubby and I actually joined in and began to discuss these Spiderman issues as if these were real situations. We took the conversation and topics very seriously. I think mostly because to the boys these were real topics.

I am glad that the boys have something to talk about. I am glad that they are practicing social conversation. What is not good is when they get upset if you don’t agree with them with how the “comic” story should have turned out. It’s not that they don’t know its all fake. It’s not that they don’t know that they are talking about comicbook characters. Yes the issues are real to them and the topics very compelling. However, I think our next lesson, is learning how to mitigate when to get upset and when not to. Every topic is not  overarching, life-effecting, or life-changing. We definitely need to work on topic differentiation and  emotional investment.

There is, without a doubt,  always the upside to arguing about comicbook characters. At least for a few brief minutes, they stop worrying about the bad things that can happen in life (Holocaust, terrorists, wars, politics, economy, etc)…Of course there is The Big Bang Theory episode when Sheldon and Leonard do get robbed. We do have a security system, so, so far so good. However,  I definitely see an electrified net at some point in my future too...but you will NOT  find us moving to the very North Midwest ever. With all due respect to Boseman, Montana, and its sister cities throughout the great American Plains….its freakin’ cold there. 

Live long and prosper.

Until next time,

Elise

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Elise Ronan

Raising Asperger's Kids

The purpose of this blog is to document the practical and realistic approach taken over the decades to help our two sons grow, and develop in order become all that they are entitled to become as human beings.