As I settle in at the keyboard with the morning’s last cup of coffee, I see that it is Pi Day.
I have a long and rocky history with the number pi. My first introduction to it in math class produced an hysterical headache that lasted for days. The whole idea was so…irrational. Dissonance deafened me. I determined to find the end of pi just to show it could be done.
At first I didn’t know where to begin. The approximations in my math textbook didn’t help. In order to research it further, the crotchedly old maid librarian had to be approached. Honest to god she wore half-rim glasses slid halfway down the bridge of her nose that she would glare over to cause children to burst into flame. She gave a twitch that might have been a smile when I told her what I wanted. She explained to me that computers were working on finding the end of pi and would no doubt find it much more quickly than me if it was to be found at all. She seemed amused, but it was probably just by my agony.
Then she turned human for a moment and, with an air of a secret to be revealed, led me to a stack in the back corner where no one ever went. She pulled a slim volume from the shelf—hardly a book, really, just a booklet but with real hardcover binding and almost a hundred pages. She handed it over and I thumb-fanned the pages. It was numbers. All numbers. I turned back to the front of the book and found the first line:
3.1415926535…
The whole book was pi, and still that maddeningly irrational number went on and on after the book ended! My first childhood ambition crumbled around me.
I rallied from the defeat somehow and life went on somehow. Time itself taught me to embrace the irrational and make of it the best I could. I met other irrational numbers along the way and I see their value, mathematically speaking.
Still, there is a bit of a sting. Nowadays the only pi I readily embrace is fruit pi. It is real and sweet and, thankfully, comes to an end.