It had been quite a few hours since SpongeBob had left Mrs. Puff's classroom for the day; enough hours, in fact, that it was now nighttime. SpongeBob was in his library, standing on a ladder and looking through his books. He could have sworn he had a book that was all about the history of boating...
"Let's see..." As he saw the book he was looking for, he gave a satisfied smile. "Ah, there she is."
He reached up to pull it out, but its weight caused him to fall backward onto the floor. Almost as soon as he'd landed, with the book planted on the top of his head, Gary slithered up to him in curiosity and gave a meow. SpongeBob's head sprang back up, bringing the book up into the air for a moment. Then it landed right in front of SpongeBob - but the impact created a somewhat thick cloud of dust.
His first response was a surprised expression - and a visible twitch of irritation from his nose later, SpongeBob gave a rather mighty sneeze. "AHHH-TCHOO!"
Luckily, that one sneeze was enough to blow all of the dust away from him. It didn't bother Gary, either. It was quite a sneeze, however, so SpongeBob sulked as he rubbed his nose a couple of times with his right forefinger.
"I gotta dust my library more often," the sponge commented. "Or better yet, get a vacuum cleaner."
"Meow?" Gary asked in curiosity. SpongeBob stopped rubbing his nose immediately to respond.
"What is this, Gary? Why, it's the complete history of all boating, ever! And I'm going to memorize it tonight for the field trip tomorrow."
"Meow."
"I'm perfectly capable of reading 7,400 pages and still getting my required eight hours of sleep, before the bus picks me up promptly at 8 AM tomorrow," SpongeBob reassured him, rather rapidly. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to get started?"
Gary looked at him for a moment, but then crawled away.
"Alright, let's see what this little pamphlet is all about." SpongeBob picked up the book and began to read. "Chapter 1. In the beginning, Neptune created the sail."