I know I’m late to this parade but we’ve been watching and enjoying “Young Sheldon,” the CBS-TV series now in its seventh and final season. A prequel to “Big Bang Theory,” the show portrays the East Texas upbringing of Sheldon Cooper, kid genius. The cast is great (with surprising supporting and guest stars), the writing consistently funny, and you can do a lot worse in 20-minutes of TV time these days.
A recent episode triggered my “dads like us” radar. Sheldon, already elevated to high school before he’s even a teenager, is allowed to audit a high-level physics class at a nearby college. A new character is soon introduced. Her name is Paige, a girl about Sheldon’s age, also exceptionally advanced and auditing that same class.
Paige is the first real “peer” that Sheldon has met. He’s intrigued to meet her. His parents are intrigued, too, especially when they anticipate connecting with her parents. The Coopers have a unique kid. Paige’s parents have a unique child. Won’t it be great, the Coopers think (especially Sheldon’s mom) that they’ll finally be able to talk to and relate with a couple who share a similar parenting experience? They arrange for a family visit. All kinds of great expectations are in the air.
Those don’t go exactly like planned. Sheldon’s mom is quickly taken aback by how “perfect” Paige’s family seems to be and how “perfect” the marriage of Paige’s parents seems to be. Mary Cooper ends up feeling even worse than she did before, probably more isolated than ever, and unhappy about her own family’s “imperfect” handling of their “special needs” child. Been there, done that.
Luckily, thankfully, realistically things kind of work out later when the Coopers get a closer look at Paige’s family and realize things in that family are not as perfect as they seem. That family is facing challenges, too, in raising a child who does not really “fit” into the normal world. They’re facing pressures as parents and as a couple. BIG LESSON? Everybody is just trying to do the best they can with the world as it has been presented to them.
I’m the dad of kids on that special scale, just the other end of it. Maybe you are, too. We’d like to be doing the family, and parenting, and marriage-thing perfectly. Not going to happen. Comparing ourselves to others doesn’t help. Doing the best we can, for our kids, for ourselves, is about the best we can do. Falling down, and getting up, falling down and getting up, falling down and getting up, all the way to heaven. Hang in there.
