You must be Leonard's mother.
I don't know if I must be, but yes.
I'm Penny.
I'm his neighbor.
Dr. Beverly Hofstadter.
Nice to meet you.
You're a hand shaker.
Interesting.
Come with me.
I'll walk you to the apartment.
Would you like to exchange
pleasantries on the way?
- Yeah, sure, I guess.
- All right, you start.
I've always been curious. What was
Leonard like when he was little?
I think you mean young.
He's always been little.
Right.
What was he like when he was young?
You'll have to be more specific.
Okay, like, five or six.
Five.
At that age, he was well enmeshed
what Freud would call
the phallic stage of psychosexual development.
An outmoded theory, of course,
but the boy did spend most of his waking hours
with a tight grasp on his penis.
Leonard mentioned
you were a psychiatrist.
That is one of my degrees.
My primary field is neuroscience.
Well, I'm an actress.
Why?
What do you mean why?
There are studies that
suggest that many who go into
the performing arts suffer from
an external locus of identity.
Yeah, I don't know what that means.
It means you value yourself
only as others value you,
which is often the result
of unmet childhood emotional needs.
I had a wonderful childhood.
Tell me about it.
I know my dad wanted a boy.
I.. I tried being good at sports,
but I hated getting dirty!
And then, I'm assuming,
you entered adolescence.
He called me Slugger
until I got my first training bra.
And then he just stopped
playing catch with me.
I wasn't Slugger anymore.
Your mother's here!
If you want
to have intercourse with that girl,
find out what kind of cologne
her father wore.
Good to see you, Mother.
