At Peggy's apartment, Adam was on the phone with Missy.
"Not so great—did a train derail over there and kill a bunch of people?" Missy asked.
"Hmm." Adam replied with a nod. "You saw it on the news too?"
"I wasn't really watching. It was Sheldon," Missy scoffed. "Remember when he got choked on his food as a kid?"
"Of course I remember," Adam said, laughing. "In the end, it was the X-Men who saved him."
When Sheldon was nine, one morning at breakfast he choked and nearly suffocated. His dad rushed from behind, gave him a few solid slaps on the stomach, and finally dislodged the food from his throat. For weeks afterward, little Sheldon—more timid than a scaredy-cat—would just sit there, staring at his food, too afraid to eat 😬.
His dad's booming shouts and his mom's soothing words did nothing. As Zhou Shuren once said, "When faced with fear, a person has two choices: fight or flee." Naturally, Sheldon always chose to run.
Eventually, his beloved grandma took matters into her own hands. Every meal, she'd blend his solid food into a mushy drink for him to sip through a straw. That's the only way he made it through that rough patch. But doing so made the food's flavor utterly indescribable—so much so that whenever Sheldon saw Adam and the gang snacking, he couldn't help but drool 🤤.
After discovering the X-Men comics, he felt he had a lot in common with these unconventional heroes. If they could overcome endless challenges, then so could he! Then, one day, he grabbed a spicy snack stick and started chewing it vigorously—as if Professor X were beaming telepathic signals, Magneto were unleashing his magnetic power, and Cyclops were firing laser beams from his eyes. From that moment on, he became Chew-Man!
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Okay, maybe he was just really, really into food!
After conquering his fear of choking, Chew-Man's new list of fears became almost endless: dogs, birds, insects, bacteria, hugs, button-fly pants, rivers, ponds, lakes, oceans, fuzzy lamp cores, root vegetables, the squeaky sound of balloons, and even windows covered in heat-insulating film…
Emmm… I'll spare you a million more words!
Missy then brought up the train derailment story, and Adam immediately caught on. "So, Sheldon's too scared to ride trains now?"
"Exactly. Today he was supposed to take a train from Pasadena to the University of Chicago for an academic exchange. Then he saw the news about a train derailment in New York and got so scared he wouldn't even board his favorite train. The school called us, but no amount of persuasion worked—so I called Peggy, hoping she could talk some sense into him."
"If he's afraid of trains, why not just fly?" Adam joked.
"You really don't know him, do you?" Missy replied with a huff. "Sure, train derailments happen more often than plane crashes, but their death rate is much lower. The first time he flew, he literally shrank into the airplane bathroom and almost got kicked off!"
"That's not entirely wrong," Adam conceded with a smile. "Airplane accidents are indeed rare—but when they do happen, the fatality rate is nearly 100%. Honestly, if I weren't forced to, I'd almost never fly either. With my current physique, as long as I stick to ground transportation, I can dodge any mishap in time. Now, I wouldn't even consider flying without proper, professional parachute gear."
He added, "Back then, I wasn't so careful—first, I hadn't had any training, and even if I had, it wouldn't have mattered. And second, I wasn't a billionaire yet. Imagine a regular person carrying professional parachute gear on a plane—they'd be 100% flagged as a terrorist! But now that I'm one of the richest men in America, it's totally fine. Rich people can be scared of death too, you know 😏. Plus, rich people really can do whatever they want."
Missy sighed, "I'd rather have him be the old Sheldon—the one who'd go on and on about trains at the mere mention of them. Remember when he even volunteered at a train museum and got kicked out by the curator?"
Adam couldn't help but laugh. "Haha."
That whole incident happened after Sheldon graduated high school at age eleven—yes, he was that precocious—and before he headed off to college. The local train museum was recruiting volunteer guides, and who could possibly love trains more or know them better than Sheldon? As soon as he saw the ad, he called up the museum and bombarded the curator with an hour-long monologue of his ridiculously detailed train knowledge. Despite being just an eleven-year-old kid, he convinced the curator to overlook that fact and accept his application.
Then the curator started to understand exactly what Sheldon's high school teachers had experienced. Sheldon was a true train aficionado—what the curator knew, Sheldon knew; and what the curator didn't know, Sheldon knew too! At first, it seemed fantastic—a free expert on trains! But then Sheldon's need to show off grew. Soon, he began testing the curator with tricky questions and traps—like the newest mini-speech that debuted in "69 Book" (yes, you read that right 😆). When the curator managed to dodge Sheldon's traps and answer correctly, Sheldon lavished him with praise, making it seem as though the curator was the real expert and he was merely the interviewee.
Whenever visitors arrived, Sheldon would launch into endless lectures about trains—even when they were in the restroom, he'd explain things through the door. When the curator handed out self-written pamphlets on train trivia, Sheldon would call them out in public, pointing out errors. When the curator later asked him to stop, Sheldon took it as a chance to "privately instruct" the curator—just like he used to correct his high school teachers' mistakes (because, let's face it, teachers are all about saving face). After his teachers collectively complained to the principal countless times, Sheldon seized that little trivia point! But to the curator, this overly show-off kid was just too much. In the end, he was shown the door.
Sheldon later counted that fiasco as one of the top ten tragedies in his beloved train chronicles.
"Adam, is there anything you can do?" Missy asked.
"All I can do is let time dull the fear," Adam replied with a chuckle. "For now, just have someone drive him there."
Back when Sheldon's apartment had been burglarized, he was so shaken that he not only installed a load of security gadgets but also started imitating DC's Rorschach—hiding under his bed every night to record his impressions of the sinful city of Pasadena. At every little sound, he'd jump in terror. Eventually, he decided to move out of Pasadena in search of a safe haven. But even in a vast country like America, he couldn't find a truly safe spot. He once picked a "perfect" place only to have his luggage snatched right in broad daylight as soon as he got off the train—forcing him to return home in defeat. And yet, somehow, he ended up living contentedly afterward.
Time, after all, is the best healer—even for someone as quirky as Sheldon.
"We've thought of everything," Missy continued. "Little George is opening a store, I'm in college, my grandma is busy with her own love life, and my mom could help—but Chicago is so far away that she'd have to fly to Pasadena first and then drive him. There just isn't enough time."
"Then why not hire someone to drive him?" Adam suggested.
"Is this the first time you've met Sheldon?" Missy grumbled. "At times like these, to him, everyone except family and friends looks like a villain. According to him, on such a long journey, what if he gets murdered halfway? Or even kidnapped and sold into slavery?"
"Can't the school send someone?" Adam asked, half-amused, half-exasperated.
"Too late now," Missy sighed. "He didn't apply in advance."
Adam was left speechless. Sheldon's quirks truly knew no bounds.
(End of Chapter)