Penny's mom Lynda devotes one of her columns for a parenting website to the problem of how to tell when one's teenager has matured. In the process of writing it, she recalls how she and Rob met as adolescents back in 1980. Rob, then a smart-alecky jock, became interested in Lynda after she put him and his friends in their place with a withering stare for mocking her nerdiness. He proceeded to flirt with her through a series of childish pranks, to which she'd respond with anger and even violence.