Being Patrick

*SCOOBY'S FEET PODS

I'm not worried about Scooby-Doo's feet pods. I'm concerned with the pieces of Patrick.

12:30 p.m. Lunch. Starfish or not, I down a fried shrimp sandwich from one of the park's fast-food joints. It's decent shrimp, but I feel like a cannibal.

1:04 p.m. Time to suit up. My costume is the color of Pepto-Bismol. Only it's a brighter pink.

Since we performers are responsible for our suits, I spray down all the places that will touch my skin with a hospital-grade disinfectant known as TOR.

1:35 p.m. I step into giant fuzzy leg pods and pull up my mesh-style underwear and suspenders. Next come a pair of massive pea-green pantaloons.

Patrick's head and body unit is heavy -- under the pink fuzz there's a structural shell. I need help from Vest and an assistant to hoist it over my head and get my arms through the knapsack-style harness inside.

SpongeBob's suit, I'm told, is equipped with a personal fan. Nothing fancy like that in mine. It's like a tropical evening in here: dim, roughly the color of sunset, scraps of thread and duct tape hanging limp in the humid air.

As a final touch, I attach some Velcro straps and slide my arms into the arm pods, which I try to flap using subway-style fabric straps. Voila.

2:25 p.m. Vest and her assistant explain the rules. No talking in the suit. No food. No gum. No running. No signing autographs (how could you grip a pen with a flipper?). And no embellishing the costume.

"Once SpongeBob came out with a bracelet on," explains Vest, "that's supposed to go with Dino from the Flintstones. Someone was like, 'Hey, look, SpongeBob has bling-bling!' I had him back in the shack in two seconds."

The bracelet story reminds me of the controversy over whether SpongeBob is gay, whatever that means in the world of cartoons. In January, the founder of a conservative Christian group addressed members of Congress at a Washington dinner, warning that SpongeBob was the star of a "pro-homosexual" video that was to be mailed to elementary schools across the country. The video turned out to encourage kids to be "tolerant" of a wide range of differences, but since it touched off a national debate, I decide to get an opinion on it from the actor who, at this exact moment, is struggling to squeeze into the bottom part of SpongeBob's suit.