Happy Pi Day!
Mr. D and I used to celebrate March 14th in high school; he even won a constrained writing prompt once, where each word in his essay contained the same number of letters as the digits of pi–3.14159… The only phrase he remembers from it now is “audibly delicious,” but how could we ever forget the holiday?
It was uniquely our own, a quirk of our nerdy math-and-science school; a day to eat pies and march onto the football team, where we would all assemble into the shape of the Greek letter.
Our high school math teacher visited us for dinner a few nights back, and although I never took his discrete math course, he taught kids about fractals and the Fibonacci sequence and all kinds of cool shit. I wonder if celebrating Pi Day was his idea.
Mr. B now works as a “freelance mathematician” and spends his extra income on hobbies comprised largely of “drugs and alcohol.”
“What’s your drug of choice?” I asked, and when he said weed, we all smoked a joint after the kids went to bed. A bit loose on wine, he told us the story of our former principal, who started quite possibly the greatest public high school in a state so notorious for its education system that it’s not uncommon for families to relocate to better school districts. The principal was apparently a bit of a perv who exerted his power over a female staff member, and the entire story reminded me of my all-time favorite parable, the Ballad of Anthony Weiner. (If anyone ever asked me who I would most want to have dinner with, dead or alive, it would easily be him.)
After dinner, I texted another high school friend about my newfound gossip, but apparently it was already old news. “I think our principal might be a total Anthony Weiner,” I wrote. “Not sure if he texted dick pics, but just as a metaphor: brilliant educator/politician who also happens to be a creep with women.“
My friend replied, “I know about [the principal] from when I was in Catholic School. He was dismissed from St. M’s under similar circumstances. That’s how our high school came to be; he brought half of the staff. That’s why the school was so good: they started off with a core of experienced teachers and a leader they believed in. I’m reminded of the Dave Chapelle bit where there’s a superhero who saves people, but in order to save them he has to rape someone. Our stellar high school experience and education was born from a charge of sexual harassment.”
Dave Chappelle was speaking about Bill Cosby, the entitled, ego-maniacal sexual predator.
Mr. B’s wife didn’t smoke with us. As a healer witch (nurse), she can’t take the risk. But as cannabis filled the air, she told me stories from the operating room: the vile things urologists would say about women’s genitals; the times she was groped, how her body would go stiff, how she’d hope that the doctor’s hands wouldn’t move further. #Metoo didn’t exist in those days.
Our math teacher defended the principal to the end. In fact, they remain friends. About a year back, Mr. B posted this on Facebook, and I judged him for it:
Cosby wasn’t pure evil, despite his many atrocities against women. He was nuanced, as we all are. That’s what makes Game of Thrones so good. The bad guys (with the exceptions of the Boltons) are complicated. They push little boys out of castle windows, and we somehow still come to care for them. They “rape but they save,” in the metaphoric, Dave Chappelle sense.
I guess I like characters with shades of grey. I thought of that tonight, while finishing the first Harry Potter film with the girls, wondering if I fully agreed with the premise. The greatest fights of good and evil often occur within ourselves, I thought. We can think of others as purely evil (and there are the undeniable Boltons and Voldermorts), but the overwhelming majority of us are more complex.
Speaking of… a witch from work just resigned. It’s the most fascinating bit of office gossip, so fascinating, in fact, that the Duck texted me about it tonight.
There was a time when I hated the Duck, when I drove into work every morning singing Big Sean. But it was a weird relationship because even when I hated her, I respected her. She was smart, good at her job, and we were very simpatico when it came to ’90s references. Her husband is also a fan of the herb.
A few weeks back, the Duck and I went to lunch, and she asked about the witch, Samantha Stevens. 
The Bewitched character is a perfect image for Samantha–beautiful, curvy in all the right ways. Gorgeous, ambitious. Duplicitous and conniving, depending on who you ask. If she were in Harry Potter, she would definitely be House Slytherin (only fitting, as she loves the color green). She is unquestionably destined for great, possibly terrible things.
Samantha hasn’t made a lot of friends at work. Higher ups from other offices malign ours, and when they do, they often lay the blame squarely on her leadership and team (ironic since she just received a leadership award).
Samantha’s a quintessential politician who campaigned for state office in 2016, and even though she lost in the face of Trump’s victory, she emerged from the ashes to assume one of the greatest ascents in office history. At just 32 years old, almost a year before her witchy birthday, she became the #2 in our unit, the Stringer Bell to our office’s Avon Barksdale. Then she pissed off a lot of people through poorly implemented policies and haughty arrogance.
But she was always nice to me. So when the Duck asked me over pizza why I was one of the few people who didn’t dislike her, I wanted to say, “Please! I have way more reason to dislike you!” Instead, I shrugged and repeated my line, the one I think of often, in light of Hillary’s defeat: Ambitious women aren’t always treated fairly.
Samantha turned 33 on January 31, the same day as Doug Pederson (fuck yeah, Eagles!), and the same day as the Blood Moon, Super Moon, Blue Moon.
“You know what this means,” I later told coworkers who know about my witch/33rd birthday theory. “She’s a Supreme. She’ll be unstoppable now.”
It seemed she was. And now her last day is Friday. It feels symbolic that it was announced today. Pi Day. An irrational circle. Things don’t make sense, but there’s an order to it, an infinite answer that exists beyond our comprehension.