Close your eyes and imagine this scene: it's the mid-to-late 2000s, the flickering light of a TV screen in the living room bathes your face, the family computer rests on the table close by, unused. You laugh and smile as your favorite characters prance across the screen. SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star are up to some hijinks, and whatever worries you have about the goings-on in third grade, the frustrations of learning multiplication tables and the lunchroom politics, evaporate.

Now, years later, in a very different present, the world of Bikini Bottom remains as a sanctuary for the soul. Mr. Krabs will always be greedy and Squidward Tentacles will always be grumpy. The world will change around them, the sea's waves will sweep and storm, all the little kids will grow up. But a place in the mind, once rooted and built on strong foundations, will remain pristine. Memes of SpongeBob endure long after the show has ended, still providing a vocabulary to describe any situation or feeling.