Sheldon's Spot is a place in Sheldon and Leonard's apartment which Sheldon has claimed as his own. In his own words, Sheldon has placed this location "in a state of eternal dibs", and has little tolerance for anybody who tries to sit there. Specifically, the spot is the left side of the couch, but was also seen as his spot in the flashback episode "The Staircase Implementation", in which the first furniture seen in the living room is simple lawn chairs.

Origin and developmentEdit

Sheldon's spot in the apartment originated from the unaired Pilot episode which was not a location in the apartment, but a table at Big Boy where he and Leonard would eat frequently. This spot was reconfigured to be inside the apartment for the second Pilot episode. Inside the apartment, Sheldon describes his spot as being the ideal location for the television. The parameters of both spots were the same:

"In the winter, that seat is close enough to the radiator to remain warm and yet not so close as to cause perspiration. In the summer, it's directly in the path of a cross breeze created by opening windows there and there..."

The alteration for the parameters inside the apartment included a comment about the television:

"It faces the television at an angle that is neither direct, thus discouraging conversation, nor so far wide to create a parallax distortion."

Alternate spotsEdit

Sheldon's parameters for this spot are also applied to other locations. Sheldon searches for a spot in Penny's apartment in "The Work Song Nanocluster" and even searches for a spot inside Leonard's room in "The Maternal Congruence." Sheldon also has unofficially claimed a specific table at "The Cheesecake Factory, a spot on a jail cell bench during the episode "The Excelsior Acquisition", and a parking spot at Caltech University, seen in the episode "The Parking Lot Escalation", even though he has neither a driver's license nor a car. Sheldon even claims the left side of the couch in their arctic hut during the episode "The Monopolar Expedition".

Attachment to his spotEdit

Sheldon defines his seat as "It is the singular location in space around which revolves my entire universe." Sheldon's attachment to his spot is well known to other characters, to the point that they're shocked when he gives his spot to Howard in the episode "The Apology Insufficiency". He did this because he accidentally botched Howard's opportunity to get a government job when Sheldon was being interviewed by an FBI agent asking Howard's friends about his conduct.

Sheldon relates his spot to himself in mathematical terms in The Cushion Saturation:

"In an ever-changing world it is a single point of consistency. If my life were expressed as a function on a four-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system, that spot, at the moment I first sat on it, would be (0,0,0,0)."

HistoryEdit

In "The Staircase Implementation" (when Leonard talks to Penny about when he first met Sheldon), it is learned that Sheldon had a spot where he always sits far before the acquisition of the couch. Of this spot (a lawn chair), Sheldon says "...I have placed [the seat] in a state of eternal dibs". While his justification for the positioning of this seat is similar to that of his future self, Sheldon was less socially inclined, thus the seat "...[facing] the television at a direct angle...[to avoid] being subjected to conversation...".

When Leonard questions him, he says: "Cathedra mea, regulae meae. That's Latin for 'my chair, my rules'". However, once Sheldon finds that Leonard bought a couch for $100 from some people moving out of the apartment, he sits in each spot on the couch until he finds the one he likes best. Though this would become Sheldon's famous seat which he says is still not comfortable when he sits in it for the first time:

"I'm still not comfortable... Of course, there's too many people here."

When Leonard, Raj, and Howard leave, Sheldon smiles and says, "Oh yes. This is definitely going to be my spot", and thus, "Sheldon's Spot" was created. Penny questions how Leonard knows this, as he left the apartment, to which Leonard replies, "Do you want me to finish working on your man feet or not?"

"The Electric Can Opener Fluctuation" develops Sheldon's relationship with "Sheldon's Spot" whereupon after his return to Apartment 4A after their three-month scientific expedition to the North Pole, Sheldon addresses Sheldon's Spot saying, "hello, old friend," and upon settling into it, he contentedly sighs, "Daddy's home."