Pi in Your Eye

Okay first the obvious. It's the third month and the 14th day — a.k.a. 3.14, thus Pi Day.

If that makes no sense, I refuse to explain it any further and expose myself to mocking for no other reason than that I remember what was repeated to me more than one thousand times in school.

The bottom line, some people resent those who know the numbers of pi, so don't be the fool who tells them that 3.14 is only the beginning of it.

You think I'm making this up. Not so. I will soon provide a real life example full of clenched teeth and revenge.

But first—my conjecture about the similarities between pi and the geeks who understand it.

As far as we know, pi goes on forever. You can jeer at it, pressure it, tease it for not wearing the latest fashion, and it will go on and on into a trillion numbers that are beyond you.

Pi is an irrational number that's a dappled thing of sorts with no tidy even box you can put it up and away in, thinking you've figured it out.

And now for the example I promised. Years ago, fighting gravity, I somehow made it through my office door to work another joyful day, sitting in a cubicle next to a "delightful" co-worker, who had a gift for sharing her misery with others.

Ranting about the ridiculous questions on "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader," she said — I mean they asked them what pi was. Who the #@$! knows what pi is?

Facing coffee-deprivation, and out of reflex, I mumbled 3.14 without thinking. I didn't bother to mention one, five and nine, as I quickly realized the error of my ways.

Furious about not being smarter than a fifth grader and at the nervy office mate who dared understand pi better than she, the cubicle queen proceeded to increase her "delightfulness" factor exponentially (a concept I wouldn't dare explain to her) — and spent days trying to exact revenge.

What she failed to recognize is how little I cared.

Oh, did I tell you, pi is transendental. We geeks transcend.