Pi Day

Let me tell you about Pi day.  March 14th, which reads out as 3.14.  First off, it only works in the states because of how we list our dates; month-day-year, which doesn’t really make sense if you think about it.  Whatever, it doesn’t matter.

My math teacher in high school loved Pi day for obvious reasons.  He always had a party that day.  I had the favor of taking a two year math course in high school, which meant getting to have the party twice with this same teacher.  I also found out I don’t like math, but that’s neither here nor there.

For this party, you had to bring things related to Pi.  Usually Pie.  However, pie would get old after the fourth kid or so brought something random from the store.  So, bringing anything round and edible would suffice.  If you could find the circumference of the item, it was good to go.

I was no trouble maker in high school, but I could see how people could abuse this.  First, you have kids bringing in stuff like watermelons.  They’re messy, unwieldy, and probably not easy to share among a lot of people.  Probably not the best option for a classroom party.

You could have students bringing in pepperoni or sausage, because after all, who doesn’t like a smorgasbord/ charcuterie tray, with cheese and stuff?  Pi day doesn’t have to be all about sweets.  But then you could have somebody bring in a whole ham round.  Next, we find that one person who is upset because of religious reasons, and you end up with a quarter-eaten ham at the end of the party.  The kid leaves it in the grocery bag he brought it in and forgets about it at the end of the day.  It stays in the class room over the weekend, and when class resumes on Monday, it smells like something has died.

To this day, I still remember a decent number of digits to pi, although writing them down here doesn’t prove that I didn’t just copy/paste it from somewhere else.