and his haircut records were supposed to have been started and maintained by a non-big city Texas barber.
Sheldon is from Houston. While the Bayou City may not be metro Los Angeles, it is hardly a “small town”.
i recall that his mom sent him to some doctor in some big city to get his head checked. i don’t have good recall on his Texas life.
I think this is behind the idea that Sheldon’s background is semi-rural (the criticism of his using “hill people” to describe Penny’s background)…Houston is the 4th largest city and the 6th largest metro area in the US. Sheldon grew up in what looks like (from the very few episodes where we saw his mother’s house) an inner suburb of Houston. Not classically redneck, which usually describes a more rural denizen.
Of course, Penny grew up in Omaha, which itself isn’t really redneck country. It’s population is less than half Houston’s, but it’s still in the multiple hundred thousand range (400,000, give or take). The point, I think, is that Sheldon considers Nebraska to be a backwater place, and Omaha to be a cowtown. Which, in Sheldon’s world, is all he needs for it to be true, since it’s in the social arena rather than the scientific.
Actually. Sheldon is from Galeveston, not Houston. (cite) Omaha has roughly **10 times **the population of Galveston.
I’m not sure anyone from Texas has any leg to stand on to criticize someone else being from redneck hickville, frankly. 
Hey! I suppose Alberta is the center of culture and sophistication??? 
Well, Calgary is.
Jim Parsons is from Houston, which may be where the mixup comes in.
(I think it was Jay Leno who was interviewing him and basically asking him about the rodeo circuit and bluegrass until Parson said something like “Houston had about five million people when I was growing up, it really wasn’t Walnut Grove”.)
Sheldon is from Galveston, TX.
Whenever my Albertan relations come to visit, my welcoming line is always “Come in, come in, get the shit off your boots.”
It never gets old. 
The barber shop in the student union at my college had haircut records. When you first went there as a freshman, they wrote out the haircut on an index card and filed it in a little cabinet. That way you could get the same cut no matter which barber you got. (I actually hate that conversation about how I want my haircut, so I wish more barbers did that.)
As for Howard’s astronaut adventure, I’d like to think that if he really does go to the international space station, Sheldon would have to respect that. Most nerds I know would find that incredibly cool. It’s still a really rare achievement.
Don’t be silly. Howard will always be one of the Oompa-Loompas of science as far as Sheldon is concerned. Of course other people will probably treat him differently. Imagine an episode where he gets some groupies.
For some reason, I’m anticipating Bernadette somehow ending up getting selected and becoming an astronaut. She’ll be helping Howard out somehow and the NASA guys will invite her to participate in training and send her up for some sort of zero-g microbiology research.
I’d rather see his mom selected due to some experiment on the effects of Zero G on obese elderly women. Howard and his mom become the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question of “first mother-son in space”, and she gets a talk show deal (but is still an unseen character). “OUR NEXT GUEST IS ONE OF THOSE SKINNY LITTLE OLSEN TWINS!”
Given the title of the show I don’t think it’s microbiology she and Howard will be researching. Unless that’s another height joke.
I’m not that witty - wish I was. Bernadette has a PhD in microbiology; that’s all I was referring to! :smack:
Ya know…if they end up sending his mom instead of him, that would move the plot forward and clear the way for him and Bernadette to get married since he would not only need her around but also Bernadette has always had a bit of a hard time adjusting to their relationship. OTOH, that’s a pretty unlikely scenario.
I tend to avoid using the phrase due to its general overuse, but if this were to happen it would be a true jump-the-shark moment for BBT.
Yes, but the idea of Bernadette supplanting Howard on the mission intrigues me. It would certainly put a serious kink in their relationship.