An 8-year-old New Jersey boy, recalling an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, saved his 5-year-old neighbor this weekend by jumping into a lake and bringing the drowning boy to shore, the Daily Record reports.

Andrew Gentile, 5, of Washington Township, says he can't remember much about the ordeal, except this: "I was drowning."

Andrew's mother, Shirley Gentile, tells the newspaper that she had thought the water was shallow at the edge of the lake, but it was in fact 6-feet-deep there.

At first, she tried to save him, but panicked herself in the deep water.

That's when 8-year-old Reese showed up.

"I just saw and then I just knew how to react, I jumped in," says Reese, who swam the short distance and grabbed Andrew, mimicking what he'd learned on TV.

"The hardest part was when we both went under, getting us back up to the surface," Reese tells the Record.

His elementary school has already held a Reese Ronceray Day and the local mayor is calling him a hero, but Shirley has a different description, the paper says.

She calls him "an angel."

(Posted by Doug Stanglin)