Pie Day

In a few weeks, my son Eiji is going to celebrate his fifth birthday.   Five seems like a milestone birthday to me, and as his brother notes “five is a big birthday because it is half of ten”.  So it is.  Not to be outdone numerology-wise by my 7 year old, I realized that when Eiji turns 5, the cumulative age of our family will be 100 years old!   Yeah! 100! And we vote, suckas!

And it gets better!

Eiji’s birthday is on March 14.  This is especially cool, because it is “pi” day. (Get it? 3/14 = 3.14).  Nice. As an MIT grad (and let’s not forget high-school varsity “math-lete”), I was pretty jazzed to have a kid born on pi day.  It’s an irrational dream come true. Sure, it would have been better if my wife could have somehow held him in for more digits of pi accuracy (ideally until 1:59pm and 26.5 seconds).   But that is just ridiculous!  I would never jeopardize my wife’s health or that of the baby!  Unless she wanted it too.  But trust me, it’s a tough topic to broach – especially while she’s making so much noise grunting.  It’s my own fault for not including a NASA countdown “hold” in the birth sequence.  He launched of her like a little rocket about one hour shy of pi.

Still, pi day is pi day.  I’m very happy.  And it gets even better because we always celebrate pi day with pie.  Delicious pie.  But even pie can have complications.

A few days before Eiji’s first birthday party, in 2006,  I realized I needed to order a pie.  I immediately thought of Pasadena’s “Pie ‘n Burger” diner and their excellent pies (http://www.pienburger.com/ ). But a key detail popped into my head: Pie ‘n Burger is located very close to the Caltech campus.  As I dialed the phone,  I started to freak!  Pi day + Caltech nerds equals massive run on pies!  Argh! I waited too long and now I’m going to have to scramble to find a pie for pi day!  Someone answers the phone and I breathlessly ask about pie.  I’m surprised by the lack of panic on the other end.  She says they have pies, but I can’t believe it.  At the risk of starting an Abbott-and Costello routine, I press my case: 

Me:  I’m very surprised you have pies, considering it is “pi day”. 

Pie ‘n Burger waitress:  What day? Pie day?  What do you mean “pie day”?

Me:  You know, in math, the number pi? 3.14159256...?  The Greek letter “pi”?

Pie’n Burger waitress:  Honey, I don’t know what you are talking about.  We have pies if you want to order one.

It turns out, to my surprise, “Pi day” is not celebrated as widely as I would have expected.   Or maybe, just maybe, it’s just another way that MIT rocks over Caltech.  

Happy Birthday Eiji!