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When I first watched the season 2 episode Frankendoodle
back in 2002, I remember being particularly captivated by the magic
pencil featured in it. As I was somewhat of a credulous child back then (I thought for many years as a kid that fruit jelly actually came from jellyfish—thanks, SpongeBob SquarePants!), I believed to a degree that pencils really did take on the fantastic properties shown in the episode when they were dropped into the ocean. I thought it was possible, for example, to draw usable objects and even living things with a regular pencil once it was in the ocean; as I had never been to the ocean, what possible evidence from personal experience could I have to refute what I was watching?
Looking back, I suppose this was a sign of the great influence that SpongeBob SquarePants had over me when I was a kid. Though I knew back then, of course, that sea sponges and starfish couldn't actually speak, every now and then I interpreted some fictional element of the show as true or partly true. Hillenburg was a marine biologist, after all, so I assumed that those things that I saw in his television show which I could not contradict through personal knowledge or experience were probably true; he knew far more than I did regarding the ocean and marine life, and so I believed him.
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This page last modified on 30 March 2021.