THE VALUE OF PI
by Karen Bennett
re edit 8-‘14
words 560
Our seventh grade math teacher turned
her back to the class and wrote on the board in caps, THE VALUE OF PI. Then she turned to us and mumbled something
about “three-point-one-four.” What the hell? Pie? Plus, she spelled it wrong.
What was she talking about?
My
head snapped up. There I was, suffering through a class in Math, basically a
foreign language, and lo, the woman breaks into a lecture about dessert! She
had my full attention.
Pie,
ahhh, pie. The subject whooshed me straight back to the square kitchen table,
me swinging my feet, waiting for the pie to be cut and delivered to my waiting
hands. My fork was on the folded napkin. I was sitting straight. Was I alone,
or celebrating with other family members and company? Bottom line was one or
two pies were on the table and my mother was dividing them up.
My
mother’s crusts were legendary. She fashioned a ruffled rim, fluted with neat
regularly spaced pinches. The buttery, cinnamony Macintosh apples, which wilted
in the baking process made them easily yield to the fork. Because we were Pennsylvania
Dutch we frequently had Shoo-fly Pie, a confection of brown sugar crumbs over a
molasses base. Ohhh, so delicious—and so necessary. And what about pumpkin
pies—a subject onto themselves, where the words ginger and cinnamon, perhaps
whipped cream, are added to the story.
I
was about eight and attending a summertime party the first time I was served a
piece of pecan pie. I stationed myself near the hostess, not to miss the
dessert. In time the nice lady handed me a china plate with a symmetrically
placed piece of that pie. My eyes opened wide. The amber syrup glistening on
the pecans looked like jewels. I knew I was on to something serious. Ummm. The
sweetness of the dessert threatened to kill me, but I thought eating it was
worth the risk. Pecan pie, over the years would ultimately consume me—and me
it!
I
directed my attention to the teacher to see what the business of those numerals
was. Sure enough she had drawn a pie wedge, its tip in the middle of a circle,
with a right sided parenthesis accentuating the central point of the pie. I was
confused.
Three-point-one-four? Okay, so this was math class after all. The
measure around the pie is 360 degrees, and therefore the distance of cutting
straight across was 180 degrees, right? Based on my numeral expertise I knew we
couldn’t be talking about calories, because the only numbers associated with
pie in my experience were calories, which were way up there. The calorie count
would soar into the many hundreds with the addition of squirted-on whipped
cream—non-dairy or full creamy served with a spoon. I was stumped. So I’m sitting there, all transcendental
like, and it comes to me.
The
Value of Pie is the tartness of the lemon filling topped by the visual joy of beads
of sunlight perched on the toasted meringue. The Value of Pi could be a single
person, licking the coconut flakes folded into white creamy pudding from the
fork, in the privacy of the bedroom. Now
THAT’S the value of Pie.
About
the words, “three-point-one-four.” The teacher was probably saying, “Free
pie—want more?”
The end
