How Do You Get Rid of Pi?
Highschool was a very memorable experience. Dealing with the stresses of adolescence and worrying about the future requires much cause for a worthy relaxation technique. For me, this was being a class clown. In one particular instance I managed to piss off the Algebra II teacher enough that I'm still remembered as the Pi Guy 5 years later.
The teacher and I really never got along very well. I was a wrestler and he taught the basketball team. Centuries of rivalry between wrestlers and basketball players have brought forth many debates, sometimes leading to bloodshed. Obviously, the wrestlers would always dominate these matches but that's not what this story is concerning.
From the first week of class when we were introduced to our teacher's assistant, a college graduate who was aspiring to become a teacher herself, I would often find myself butting heads with the authority figure. I don't necessarily think it was because I intended to be a nuisance, but more so because I was stressed and felt the need to lash out a bit. Usually these behavior problems were a joke taken too far or simply speaking out of turn, never anything deliberately insulting or rude. After all, Algebra II was a subject that came naturally to me so I often times spent the class period with my head face-down on the desk.
The times that I was awake, I would frequently give the assistant teacher a hard time. The class was boring with a capital B and my class clown antics were the cure. Besides, there are only so many different ways you can learn to divide arbitrary expressions by one-another.
One particularly repetitive session I recall the teacher going through some very basic algebraic division. We were studying some different formulas to calculate circumference, radius, and area of circles. This was stuff I learned in kindergarten and it was clearly beginning to enrage me that I had to sit through it again. I remember pretending to bang my head on the desk, to show my appreciation for the lively topic we were covering, when I heard the teacher ask the class, rhetorically, "Now, how do we get rid of pi?" Instinctively I had no other choice but to yell, "YOU EAT IT!" Immediately the class started cracking up and I knew my time had come.
The next thing I knew I was in the principals office trying to explain myself without success. At least I was out of that damn class, right? To this day I am still known by many faces, most of which I have never even met, as the Pi Guy.