A short while ago, one of my readers commented and suggested I share a funny/embarrassing story on my blog from time to time. While thinking back to my college years, I came up with a “humorous happening” that I thought you all might enjoy.
This story actually starts in third grade and finishes in my freshman year of university. My third grade teacher did a wonderful job making learning fun. She was always coming up with competitions and other incentives to help us memorize multiplication tables and important facts.
One day, she told us that we would have a contest to see who could recite the most digits of pi. Well, I decided to give it my best effort and memorize 17 digits (3.14159265358979323). Unfortunately, another student in the class memorized 50 digits, so I didn’t win.
Fast forward seven years, and it’s my first day of 10th grade. I’m waiting outside my algebra 2/trigonometry class and notice a new “decoration” that the math teachers must have added to the hallway over the summer. Using a paint brush, they had written at least 200 digits of pi. (I can only imagine how tedious that would have been…)
By that time, I had almost forgotten the 17 digits that I had memorized in third grade, but reading them over a few times throughout the school year as I walked through the mathematics hallway helped store them in my long-term memory bank.
Fast forward another three years, and I’m sitting in calculus class during the second semester of my freshman year of college. The professor is talking about pi and how it’s used in calculus, and he asks the students if anyone has memorized any digits of pi beyond 3.14. “On the count of three, I want you all to shout out all the digits that you know,” he announces.
There had to be at least 300 students in that lecture hall. I figured there were surely a few who knew more than 17 digits of pi, so I started reciting what I had memorized. Well, I quickly realized that no one else was talking and the entire class was staring at me. The teacher was impressed, but I’m quite certain that my face must have been as red as a fire engine.
When I told Mr. Handsome that story, he jokingly called me a nerd, but he enjoys telling other people that his wife knows 17 digits of pi. LOL.
Feel free to share any funny/embarrassing stories that you can recall from your own life. 🙂