When I was very young, I hung out with Pajama Sam. There were three different disks that I would feed into the clunky desktop throughout the day. One disks held the entire world of “You are what you eat” (2000).  There was also “No need to hide when it’s dark outside” (1996), and of course, my all time favorite, “Thunder and Lightning aren’t so frightening.” (1998) It was in this last installment in the Pajama Sam series that I met the Y-pipe. 

Pajama Sam was my introduction into the world of computer games. I would lead the little animated kid with blue hair around these fictional animated worlds, trying to solve a global crisis of some kind. The Y-pipe is a very important piece.  He is one of the four missing pieces that are needed to fix the world’s weather machine. The weather has gone haywire. Where did I find him? Stuck in the vending machine.  

I will always remember the Y-pipe. He is the only piece that does not help you help him! He sits in the vending machine, watching you struggle to get him out. Other pieces talk to you, they tell you about how you could get them out of their predicaments. Not the Y-pipe. He just sits there, smiling, responding to everything you ask with “why?” He drove me crazy. I was too young to look on the internet for a walkthrough, that wasn’t exactly a thing in 2002. I would spend hours starring at this confounded animated piece of metal in the vending machine, pondering how to get him out and fix the weather. He just kept asking me “why?”

I eventually got him out, although I can’t remember how. I put him in place with all the other pieces and the worlds weather improves drastically. Pajama Sam has done it again. Almost in tribute to the devilish Y-pipe, I would mock my dad. “Why?” Anything he said was countered with, “Yeah dad but like, why?” And then he would explain whatever it was. This never really stopped happening. Anytime he would say, “Shall we?” I would quote from ‘You are what you eat’ (2000), pretending I was Pajama Sam sitting on his talking donut, and retort; “Let’s shall.”