Birthdays
Editor’s Note: People all over the world celebrate the birthday of Tracy Lorenz, which he also shares with Albert Einstein. That is because 3/14 is known as Pi Day, named after the irrational number that represents the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, or approximately 3.14159. (Irrational numbers are those that cannot be expressed as a fraction like 1/4, for example, which would be .25; the approximate fraction that people use is 22/7, but the attempt to express Pi yields a number that pretty much never ends.
People eat pie on this day, just because that’s what people would do. But 2019 has brought another reason to celebrate: Google has announced that Pi has been calculated out to 31.4 trillion (get it?) digits by a woman named Emma Haruka Iwao.
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I’m having a landmark birthday birthday this year, today in fact, the big 6-0. I have no idea how that happened. It was a rather remarkable birthday, I spent it helping a lady keep flood waters from entering her house. We couldn’t.
My fiftieth birthday was also a complete miss, which is just the way I liked it. Q was three, I sat home.
My fortieth was memorable because I was forced to bowl in a tournament in Alma with a bunch of guys from work that I didn’t like. They were all married so it was a big deal for them to get out of town and get drunk and play cards. I just sat in my hotel room and watched ESPN. I think we finished third in the tournament.
Thirty was a big party at my house, a girl I didn’t even know threw up upstairs.
Twenty was in college. Well, I was in college but I actually spent my birthday in Daytona Beach on Spring Break. I went down with five guys for ten days and we had $55.00 between us, total. It was not a trip rife with luxury but a memorable trip it was. I believe I spent my actual birthday-day sleeping in the back of a strangers boat in a parking lot.
Ten was a party at Bowl-A-Rama. Presents included two model cars, the kind you had to build, two kites (a manta ray and just a regular kite), and a giant bag of army men from my friend Greg Keusch.
I don’t remember much about one.
But I do know my favorite present ever.
I’m guessing nine years ago when my son Q was four he got me a statue of the Eiffel Tower. It’s white and about a foot tall and has a prominent place in my office.
The statue was purchased at Meijer, apparently every time he entered the store he would run back and look at that statue and say he was going to get it for me for my birthday. This went on for months. I don’t know why he thought I would like a statue of the Eiffel Tower, I’m not French, and Q has never been to France, but when he gave it to me that kid was just BEAMING with pride. It was as if that statue from Meijer’s was the greatest present in the world which was kind of coincidental because, ya know ... it was.
Printed by permission of the author. Email him at Lorenzatlarge@aol.com.
Get Tracy’s latest book at BarnesandNoble.com or Amazon.com, or download it from www.fastpencil.com.
Only $3.99, cheap.
