The friends imagine how dramatically their lives might have changed without Sheldon. Most of them would never have met, although Penny would still have lived across the hall. With Leonard absent, the group jokingly predicts an unlikely encounter between Penny and Sheldon in the laundry room. She flirts shamelessly, but Sheldon remains unmoved, declaring that he is saving himself for someone special—perhaps “a cute, bespectacled neuroscientist” whose hair is the color of mud. Even in this absurd fantasy, his description unmistakably points to Amy.