Happy Pi Day

I don’t know how often this occurs to you. I presume it occurs to you occasionally. It certainly occurs to me occasionally. Not more than occasionally, I’ll admit. But has it ever really hit you in the middle of just an ordinary moment, have you ever thought about dividing your life into pie slices? You know, the kind of pie diagrams they have in textbooks or in the business pages of the newspaper. It might say, “Where Your Tax Dollar Goes”. There is a picture of a pie and it says: “For Defense - 67.5%”. There’s a big pie slice out of there. Then it says: “For Governmental Operation Expenses - 32.5%”. And there’s another slice. Then: “Miscellaneous” and so forth. Well, have you ever thought of dividing your life out like that? Can you imagine what your life would look like? It would say: “Your Life”. There it is, it’s a pie you see, and it shows how you spend your day. There’s a big slice that would say: “3 1⁄2 hours sleeping”. That’s taken out, you see, that’s a slice out of your day. Then there’s a gigantic slice, a very big one that says: “fooling around”. Then there’s another slice out, say, 7.5% that goes to “frittering”. Then another 16% for “phonying it up” (trying to pretend that you’re doing something great). Then there’s a little itsy bitsy slit that says: “doing something”. That’s a very tiny thin one. This one is subject to change without notice and sometimes disappears from one week to the next. Then there’s another slice that just says: “scut”. That’s doing all the stuff like shaving or brushing your teeth. Have you ever noticed that the guys in the TV commercials are all deliriously happy doing scut? A typical TV commercial will show a guy shaving, “Oh, I just love to shave!” he seems to be saying. Of course, another commercial is the one that shows the almost unbelievably happy manic look on the face of these chicks who are doing the washing. These commercials make me scratch my head. I used to have a fairly decent sized slice taken out of my own pie for something called “running”. That slice has turned into a very thin sliver and has often vanished completely over the past few months. Since that slice of my life left, I think each of the other slices has gotten a little bigger. I have been spending more time these days fooling around, frittering, phonying it up, and doing scutwork. Sigh. All this thought about pie is making me hungry. I think I’m going to bake myself a cherry pie. Yes. Then I’m going to eat a slice. A big slice.