Many things about living in the Bay Area that make me seethe with rage. The rapidly-rising cost of living has made living independently almost impossible. Public transportation is expensive, filthy, and inconvenient. Facewash, razors, and ice cream are just some of the products you need to have unlocked if you’re shopping at Walgreens. And I’m not particularly fond of the rampant feces that seem present at every shopping mall, public library, or sidewalk.

Though what makes me want to Hulk-out the most is my inability to find parking.

This may sound like a petty complaint, and one that’s not even special to in the Bay Area, but it has been actively ruining my life for the past ten years. The amount of time I’ve spent in my car, circling the same mile diameter, desperately hunting for a space large enough to cram my dorky Prius, is both maddening and soul-destroying.

It has reached a point in my life where if someone casually suggests I meet them somewhere crowded, say like the Mission District on the weekend or Downtown Palo Alto at noon, I mentally curse them with rickets and add 20+ minutes to my journey to give myself time to find a place to park.

Or, because I have fully accepted how much driving in the city stresses me out, I’ll decline the invitation and do anything else. At this point in my life, I know what kinds of situations are too much for me, and those situations include driving in overpopulated areas, spending any time in a theme park, or waiting too long for brunch. My life is boring, but damn, that peace and silence are worth more than any day at Disneyland.

So why the hell did I spend over half an hour last Friday circling the Mission for a parking spot I knew I wasn’t going to get? Why did I risk almost hitting countless pedestrians, minor fender-benders, and an aneurysm?

Because Bean asked me to do it.

Or, more specifically, she needed a ride to the Mission, and then she needed to be picked up after, which eventually mutated into, “Why don’t you just meet me at Dandelion Chocolate?”

I was like a frog in boiling water. A simple drop-off was easy enough, but it never is just one easy request with siblings. One request turns into two, which turns into five, which turns into the time I gave up three days of my life working non-stop to pack Bean’s apartment entire apartment so she could move out by the right date. Yes, I was compensated with a ton of take-out, and no, it was not worth it.

Now at this point, you may be wondering if this post is just an excuse for me to complain about Bean and my recent promotion to unpaid nanny, and on some level, yeah, it totally is. I have enough personal experience with this kind of thing that I could easily write several blog posts about caregiver fatigue and the supreme lack of financial support available to caregivers (and those who need care), but that’s not what I feel like doing today.

Today, I want to talk briefly about Dr. Leonard Hofstadter from “The Big Bang Theory.” For those unaware of who this character or show is, I would like first to welcome you into the 21st century while you recover from being frozen in a glacier for the last 10,000 years. I think you’ll find certain inventions like the written word and indoor plumbing to be a lot more interesting than my musings about a TV character, but I still appreciate your readership.

“The Big Bang Theory” was a wildly-popular television series on CBS that ran for 12 seasons, eventually leading to the spin-off “Young Sheldon.” Despite “The Big Bang Theory’s” popularity with audiences, the show received mixed critical reception, as the jokes were often considered lazy and mean-spirited. As much as the show glorified its nerdy characters, it also actively made fun of them, as if the creators were trying to creatively have their cake and eat it, too. It was very much a “pathetic, horny losers can get friends and live rich lives just like normal people, but you’re still better than them” show.

The show centers on Leonard Hofstadter and Sheldon Cooper, two CalTech physicists, and how their lives are upended when a cute, aspiring actress moves into the apartment across from them. Leonard quickly falls in love with Penny, and Sheldon exists to make their lives more miserable.

I’ve heard Leonard Hofstadter described in many different ways: he’s the “nice guy” who enables his friends to be misogynist creeps, the smart-but-not-as-smart-as-Sheldon scientist, and the sad beta nerd who somehow manages to con super-hot Penny into marrying him. Even though Leonard is considered a “positive portrayal of a scientist,” and that shit is usually my jam, I am not a fan of the character. He’s whiny, passive-aggressive, and often mean to Sheldon.

“The Big Bang Theory” implies that Sheldon is on the autism spectrum, although it never confirms this, thus allowing viewers to project whatever personality disorders they want onto him. Sheldon is a brilliant theoretical physicist on the fast track to win a Nobel Prize. However, he’s also an emotionally-stunted mama boy who often seems incapable of caring for himself. Sheldon regularly relies on his friends for basic care: they drive him everywhere as he doesn’t have a license, they’ll look at his weird moles, and they’ve even memorized his various, complex take-out orders.

Meanwhile, I’ve been a vegetarian since 2019, and my family still tries to feed me bacon.

Sheldon is the kind of person who requires a lot of care and fussing over. Many people have written scathing critiques about Sheldon Cooper and how his autism coding has unfortunate implications for how our society understands and treats people with autism spectrum disorder. There are a lot of very valid complaints within these arguments, and I don’t want to dismiss them, even if that’s not the position I’m taking in this post.

The result is that Sheldon Cooper is a fussy man who often puts his friends, especially Leonard, in inconvenient situations. And yeah, that’s hella annoying. I would never live with someone who made me adhere to a bathroom schedule or who dictates what cuisine I’m not allowed to bring into our shared home. However, I currently live with someone who has vastly different dietary concerns from my own, needs care, and often inconveniences me.

In a way, I’ve found myself living with my own Sheldon Cooper.

My sister, Bean, was in the ICU a few weeks back. I remember the day she was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes and pneumonia as one of the most terrifying days of my life. There were moments when I thought I might lose her, and all I could do was come home to the Bay Area and wait for her to respond to the doctors’ treatments. Thankfully, she got better and eventually graduated from the ICU, but since then, she’s needed a lot of help and care. Type 1 Diabetes is already a tricky condition to learn to manage, and that’s without the additional challenge of a devastating lung infection.

So yeah, she’s needed some help, as would any person in her shoes. And as my job has graciously allowed me to work from the Bay Area, I’m the best person to do it. It’s not exactly “fair,” but neither is life. I’ll return to my boring life in the middle of nowhere in the fall, and Bean will hopefully be strong and self-sufficient enough to get by on her own. She’s a tough cookie, and I know she can.

However, until then, I will remain extremely busy with caregiving. And as long as I am caregiving, I’d like to avoid becoming a Leonard Hofstadter clone because that guy sucks.

Returning to “The Big Bang Theory,” the show mostly derives humor from having Sheldon act like an insufferable egomaniac and Leonard as his poor, put-upon friend/subordinate. Leonard gives Sheldon rides to and from work daily, remembers his special food orders, and constantly has to think ahead to avoid inadvertently inconveniencing his roommate. All of this mental labor has led to Leonard being angry and resentful toward Sheldon, even though Sheldon has no idea he’s the source of this conflict. In a few of “The Big Bang Theory”‘s better moments, the two characters will hash out their disagreements, and Sheldon will show that he’s more than capable of being a decent and considerate person when people give him the opportunity to do so.

I realize I’m still complaining about a mediocre TV show that’s been off the air for four years, but this show has a strange hold on me. Mostly because there are so many moments throughout its 12-year run when I could see that it could be something great, yet it constantly got in its own way. “The Big Bang Theory” could have been an insightful exploration of nerd subculture, neurodivergence, and social dynamics. Unfortunately, it was too focused on writing unfunny jokes designed to poke fun at the main leads for not being the right kind of masculine. And this kills me, because I think those unfunny jokes and outdated attitudes, combined with the occasional moments of genuine thoughtfulness and sweetness, made the show so wildly successful. And if there’s something that I find endlessly fascinating, it is the line between what makes something good and what makes something popular. “The Big Bang Theory” is a show that reminds me that “good” and “popular” aren’t measurable concepts on a scale but really more of a Venn Diagram.

A key point essential to the show’s continued success was that its characters stayed the same. Sheldon remained a self-obsessed genius, Leonard a geeky nice guy, and Penny, the girl out of his league. Don’t get me wrong, some changes were allowed, like Sheldon’s romantic relationship with Amy Farrah Fowler, and Penny’s growth from a hopeful aspiring actress to a mature, sarcastic pharmaceutical representative, but things mostly stayed the same. And sometimes, I can’t decide if that’s the brilliant key to this show’s success or a completely frustrating crutch that the writers rely on to maintain the status quo.

I’ve been watching this show and the superior spin-off, “Young Sheldon,” for the past few months, and I’m quickly running out of excuses for why I like it so much. I don’t mind arguing that “Young Sheldon” is a decent show, but it’s a lot harder to do that for “The Big Bang Theory.” All I can really say about that now is that my life has been chaotic, stressful, and draining these past few months, and watching these dumb shows about stupid nerds makes me feel, at least during the 20+ minute run-time, like life isn’t so bad. This is far from the first time I’ve used television to self-soothe, and it won’t be the last, but whenever I fall into my television-binging moods, I try to be at least aware of why I’m doing it.

As I watch “The Big Bang Theory,” I often want to shake Leonard and tell him that he’s the real problem. Sheldon wouldn’t be nearly as insufferable if Leonard had just set a few boundaries with him.

I truly despise how in modern conversation the word “boundaries” is wielded like a blunt tool to shut down discourse and enforce selfish behavior. When I say “Leonard should set boundaries with Sheldon,” I honestly mean that Leonard should be honest with Sheldon about what he’s willing to do for him and then be clear about what he doesn’t want to do. Leonard, if you don’t feel like driving Sheldon to the comic book store, then tell him. It’s worse if you drive him to the comic book store and then resent him for giving him that ride. You consciously chose to do something for your friend, and then you dared to add it to your mile-long list of grievances.

This is not the first time I’ve heavily criticized a fictional character for acting like this, but it’s an important conversation. It’s not right to help someone and then resent them for accepting that help. It may be a very human thing to feel, but it’s not right for the person who needed that help. When you help someone you care about with a task you hate, your time, energy, and resources are gone. You cannot gain any of that back by blaming them. All you can do is decide for yourself what you can give to people and then know when to stop. That is a decision entirely up to you.

So when I say I get when Leonard Hofstadter is such a whiny little bitch, it’s because I do. I have repeatedly put myself in upsetting situations because my loved ones did not realize they were asking too much from me. I truly hate trying to find parking in the Mission, but I subjected myself to it because Bean asked me to. Because from her perspective, she was inviting me to join her for a fun outing at one of my favorite chocolate shops. She even got me a frozen hot chocolate for my troubles. She was not asking me to engage in a futile task designed to send me into a homicidal fit of rage, even if that’s how I felt. And I think that’s the important distinction between Leonard and myself. I’m not a sitcom character trapped in a codependent relationship with my obsessive-compulsive roommate, but a human being capable of empathy and self-reflection. And even if I identify with Leonard on some days, that doesn’t mean I have to act like him.