Patrick: You're a man now, SpongeBob, and it's time you started acting like one.
SpongeBob: Yeah. Oh, but I'm not sure how.
Patrick: Allow me to demonstrate. First, puff out your chest.
SpongeBob puffs out his chest.
Patrick: Now say, "tax exemption."
SpongeBob: Tax exemption.
Patrick: Now you must develop a taste for free-form jazz.
Both listen intently to jazz music.
Patrick: OK, you're ready.
In these troubled times, it's good to have a role model, a hero, if you will. Someone who is ever optimistic in the face of adversity. Someone who loves his friends and neighbors, even if those neighbors don't necessarily return the affection. Someone who is hard-working, knows right from wrong, and is absorbent, yellow and porous.
That someone is SpongeBob SquarePants.
For those of you who don't know, SpongeBob is a cartoon sponge, much like the one in your kitchen, who lives under the ocean in Bikini Bottom. He takes great pride in his work as a fry cook at the Krusty Krab, and when not working, he practices catch-and-release jellyfishing. His battle cry is "I'm ready!", which frankly sounds much less corny than "Reporting for duty!" And he lives in a giant pineapple—how cool is that?
I don't know exactly when I became a groupie, or a Friend of The Sponge as we like to call ourselves, but it was back in those heady, giddy days of 1999. People with computer stocks were bathing in money, a movie called The Matrix warned of the dangers computers posed, and yes, we were partying like it was that year.
Then on July 19, there he was: that pirate painting singing the theme song, that infectious laugh bordering on the insane, that sheer spongy goodness. I can't remember what the first episode which I saw was, but I do remember the first one which had the biggest effect on me. (Don't get me wrong; they all had big effects—this was merely the first.) It was "Tea at the Treedome," in which SpongeBob first meets Sandy Cheeks, a squirrel who lives in Bikini Bottom with the help of a space suit and a giant, air-filled dome. Other than her being from Texas, no explanation is given as to why a squirrel is living under the ocean, but no matter. SpongeBob is obviously smitten, and then delighted when Sandy invites him to tea, provided that air is no problem. SpongeBob happily accepts ... and then tears off in a panic to his friend Patrick to find out what air is.
Patrick: You mean she puts on airs?
SpongeBob: I guess so ...
Patrick: That's just fancy talk. If you want to be fancy, hold your pinky in the air.
SpongeBob: Like this?
SpongeBob sticks his arm up and pinky out.
Patrick: Higher.
SpongeBob: Like this?
He sticks his hand up about three times his own height.
Patrick: That's it! They should call you SpongeBob FancyPants!
(It may help readers to know that Patrick Star is a borderline-retarded starfish who has been known to draw a watch on his wrist and then complain that he has to draw a new battery for it.)
My wife threatened me with divorce if I didn't stop repeating those lines (including Patrick's parting advice: "When in doubt, pinky out!") and sticking out my pinky. My wife is a wise woman and she foresaw the danger.
But it was too late.
Soon, I was watching every episode I could, trying to memorize the theme song ("Ooooh .... who lives in a pineapple under the sea?"), gleefully shouting "I'm ready!" at the changing of a crosswalk light, and cursing "Tartar sauce!" whenever something didn't go right.
Luckily, I was living in San Francisco at the time, where such behavior is not only ignored, it's encouraged.
I gasped with delight when I realized it was Ernest Borgnine and Tim Conway playing retired superheroes Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy, with John Rhys-Davies as the evil ManRay and Charles Nelson Reilly as equally evil Dirty Bubble. I grooved to the Beach Blanket Bingo music in "Ripped Pants." I laughed until I cried watching "Krusty Krab Training Video."
I began to show up late for work once Nickelodeon began airing episodes at 8:30 a.m., as I couldn't bear to step out the door until the end credits rolled. Even if it was an episode I had seen several times before. This was in addition to my weekly Saturday fix. I came close to realizing a dream on Halloween when I was going to dress up as SpongeBob. But not just any SpongeBob. Only losers would go out partying dressed as just any SpongeBob. No, I was going to go out dressed as the SpongeBob from "MuscleBob BuffPants," with the help of a pair of inflatable arms. Sadly, we couldn't find a Patrick costume for my wife. Yes, just like the heroin-addict couple who shoots together to stay together, Biana had started to watch some episodes with me and had become quite enamored with Patrick's simple ways and sometimes koan-like pronouncements.
Then, we moved from our large, $1,200 a month closet in the Tenderloin to wonderful Las Vegas. We bought a house, one with two bathrooms off the master bedroom. And I went to Target. To shop. For bathroom accessories.
Yes, my bathroom is now a shrine to SpongeBob. I've got the SpongeBob shower curtain, reminiscent of showing SpongeBob and Patrick chasing jellyfish, Sandy riding one, and their grouchy neighbor Squidward fleeing from one. I've got the SpongeBob toilet seat, with an angry Plankton, owner of the Chum Bucket diner and the show's perennial villain, trapped in a bubble. I've got the SpongeBob toothbrush holder and the SpongeBob soap dish. I've even got the SpongeBob bathroom mat, though the idea of SpongeBob grinning up between my legs as I stand at the sink in a towel did take some getting used to.
I'd like to say I now have my mania under control. I'd like to say I really don't want the SpongeBob wristwatch now on the market. That I don't secretly covet the PlayStation game. That I wasn't disappointed when my wife refused to let me buy the SpongeBob boxers, in which the entire front is his grinning face.
I'd like to say all that, but I'd be a liar.