Why Mark is SpongeBob (and why he isn't)

In all the years of my schooling, I only went home early one time. I was sick. And it wasn't my fault. It was my history teacher's fault.

It was 20 years ago, now. I can still remember the day vividly. My mother was furious. A proud career woman, she was not exactly thrilled about being called away from the office. I'm sure she thought I was faking, or just in minor pain and should have sucked it up like a man. When we got back home, and I threw up, her maternal instincts took over. The anger on her face vanished. She was no longer being inconvenienced from work. Her baby was sick. I hated seeing her mad at me, especially for this. I've never been so happy to throw up in all my life. She tended to me a bit, made sure I was ok, then went back to the office.

-

He was the funniest of teachers. His class was always entertaining. Some days, he would break from history and feed our young minds with other things. That's what he did on this day. Today was philosophy day. Existence philosophy. We were discussing different philisophical ideas on life and how it came to be.

One particular theory proved to be my downfall.

"Some scientists believe that the entire world is a construct of your imagination". He discussed this one a bit and then moved on to others. But it didn't matter. My mind was already off to the races. To a young genius like myself, this information was an intellectual Pandora's box. I started running through all the permutations and depths of what this would all mean.

If the whole world was just something I imagined, and I was actually all alone on the planet, then I had invented my teacher to tell me this. And I had created the writer at the magazine who wrote the article that the teacher had read. And the scientists that came up with the theory, to tell the writer, to write the article, so my teacher could....you get the idea.

Then I started thinking about my friends, and their parents and grand parents and great grand parents. I wondered how far up their family trees my imagination ran. And people that worked in the grocery store, or whose photos appeared in magazines, or actors in movies. Did I just invent them, or did I invent parents and ancestors for them...people I would never meet, or see. Would I invent the unnecessary out-of-sight people, or would I make them up as needed? Creating them on-the-fly if it came time to meet them.

When my friends told me stories of places they went and things they did, did they really? Were they really active and in motion when I couldn't see them? Did they eat? Did they sleep? Did they dream? Places I would never visit - never see - was there actually a China and a billion imaginary people, running about, living their lives, all in my head?

And then the depression of the reality...I was all alone on the planet. A big, plain, unpopulated planet, with only me. What a lonely reality. The sadness was overwhelming.

I began having dizzy spells, and seeing spots. This went on the duration of the class, thought lunch and half way into my American literature class when I realized I was going to be sick.

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15 years later, Mark, always the inquisitive web surfer, comes across a similar thing somewhere online. He messages me to share his new found information.

I played along. I told him I accepted this theory, and that if he was just a figment of my imagination, I could imagine him as something else. I told him that I was going to imagine him as SpongeBob, a cartoon character I really had no idea about, except that he was on half a dozen cable channels and I would see him virtually every time I flipped around the stations. I told him that if I imagined him as this hard enough, long enough, eventually he would become SpongeBob for real. I know this has to be true - it's my imagination, afterall.

I have called him SpongeBob ever since. I have tried really hard to imagine him as the cartoon character. I've done this for 5 years, and so far, he has been very resistant to my work to create a new and improved Mark.

Now, he has moved on to something new to feed his hungry mind. Quantam Physics. I don't know much about this one. From what little I gathered by our conversation last week (one I tried really hard not to get sucked into) there are an infinite number of parallel universes out "there". And on each one, another version of me exists. And for each situation in my life, there are infinte different outcomes*.

So, if you happen to be reading this from one of those infinite parallel universes, and you walk down the street in Las Vegas somewhere, one day - a day other than Halloween - and happen across a giant sponge person, please leave a comment in my parallel blog letting me know that my experiment worked. It would really bring a little sunshine to my day.

* This one went a little easier for me than the imaginary universe concept. I have already figured out why the quantam physics theory is invalid. I am not going to put the answer in print, so I can torture SpongeBob with my unshared knowledge and with the fact that I invented him in my imagination, just so that I could torture him).

Mission Aborted

Everything was ready. I was packed, fully geared, and as mentally prepared as I've ever been for anything. The route to my campsite had been plotted, mapped out and printed. The timetable was coordinated with Mark. He would drop me off at Potasi Spring, 8am Tuesday, then he would meet me at the campsite on Thursday, when he would be returning to get the geocache he failed to get the week before.

But Mother Nature decided that my first solo adventure was not to be. The forcast in the city was 'Isolated Thunderstorms'. Just Tuesday. Just enough to ruin my excursion. I still considered attempting the trip. Isolated thunderstorms in Vegas often means five minutes of rain. But the National Weather Service forcast for the area of my campsite was for 'Heavy Thunderstorms'. A bit more serious than 'isolated' in town. The thought of trudging through the valley in the rain and mud, then climing to higher elevations with the lightning blasting around...the whole trip lost it's appeal.

Then there's the issue of my tent. It's not designed to withstand heavy rain. Just setting it up in the rain is an issue, because the tent has a sunroof. It's a mesh panel in the ceiling that's a foot wide and 3 feet long. There is a cover for it, called a rainfly, but you cannot attach the rainfly until the rest of the tent is assembled. In the 10 minutes it takes to get the tent up, it would be a bowl of water. Not the most comfortable of sleeping places.

Mark called Monday night to check on the plans. "You don't sound very excited," he said when I answered the phone. Apparently my disappointment was obvious in my voice.

"So, you're wimping out, then?" It was a challenge. Goading me into a testosterone rush that would have me brave death and/or pneumonia instead of losing face. But this is not feudal Japan. I need not commit hari kari now that I have shamed the family name. I am above all that. I am a man. I am strong. I am brave. I am courageous.

I know.

My Mommy told me so.