Yoshi!

Did you ever want something so bad, you would sell out your soul and your entire value system to have it? What would cause you to stoop to such degeneracy? Drugs? Riches? A Lamborghini?

For me, it's Yoshi.

Not too long ago, I decided I could no longer function as a human being if I did not have a T-shirt with Yoshi on it. I have some T-shirt transfer paper, so I thought about making my own Yoshi shirt. I scoured the Internet for pictures of that huggable dinosaur. I found some, terribly lo-res, which I would have had to beef up with significant reworking in a vector graphics program. I was prepared to put in the hours for such a noble cause, but then I remembered what happens to T-shirt transfers after a few washes. They crack and look awful; thus I concluded I'd have to resort to commercially produced apparel.

And now it's confession time: After some serious online shopping, I finally settled on a Yoshi shirt that would meet my needs. It was 21 dollars, after factoring in shipping. Twenty-one whoppers! I shock myself. You understand that usually my upper limit for any T-shirt is 5 dollars. In making this purchase, I'd not only completely tossed thrift to the wind, but I'd done it for an overly commercialized Nintendo character! My shame ran deep.

But then on Saturday, my new T-shirt made its first public appearance on the streets of Annapolis. I was walking along the sidewalk in a semi-daze, as is my habit, when a kid and his parents passed by. The kid shouted, with all the enthusiasm of an 8-year old with no inhibitions, "YOSHI!" That broke through my stupor. I had just gotten the reaction every unfashionista dreams of—unsolicited (thoroughly, genuinely excited) approval of my outfit! Victory is mine.

You know what's scary about all this? With my Yoshi craving assuaged, I'm starting to feel the burning need to have a T-shirt with characters from Cave Story on it. Have I developed some strange video-game-fan-fashion fixation? Am I going to need an intervention? Only time will tell.