Pi's Labyrinth

I don’t like commercials. Mom says they are one of my “peeves”. The word pet peeve is also one of my peeves. According to the dictionary, an idiom is “a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words”. A pet peeve is like an idiom because its meaning has nothing to do with pets, but the word “peeve” means to annoy or irritate, which is the exact same meaning of pet peeve. Mom knows I don’t like the word pet peeve because it doesn’t make sense, so she uses the word peeve instead which is not an idiom. I have a lot of peeves. Especially when rules don’t make sense. Like pet peeve being an idiom, when it isn’t.

Like idioms that aren’t really idioms, I also try to avoid commercials. On long road trips like this one, I bring my MP3 player so I don’t have to listen to the radio and commercials like mom does. Mom says when she was a little girl like me back in the 1980’s, you couldn’t avoid commercials at all unless you didn’t watch TV or listen to the radio because there was no way to skip them. Mom says she doesn’t mind commercials though and sometimes even finds them funny. But commercials are never funny to me. If by accident I hear one, I have to cover my ears and hum until they’re finished.

We are driving on interstate 40. Actually, mom is driving, but I am her passenger because I am only ten years old. There are zero states out of fifty that will allow a ten-year-old to drive a car. There are some states that will allow a twelve-year-old to drive an ATV though, but not in California where mom and I live. In California, you actually have to be 18 to drive an ATV, but 16 to drive a car. The state that we’re going to though is New Mexico.

A road trip is whenever someone drives out of state. I have been on three road trips in my life, but those were only on Route 6 to visit dad in Nevada which is not really a fun road trip because I don’t really like the desert or visiting dad and his family very much. Not only is this the first road trip I wanted to go on for fun, but it’s also my first time on Interstate 40. Usually spending 18 hours and 37 minutes in a motor vehicle would not sound like fun at all, because I hate to miss school and I really like my routine at home, but this is a very special event in Santa Fe and mom thought that going to the convention could be a really good thing for me.

Unfortunately, dad did not agree. Dad doesn’t think my “special interests” are something that should be encouraged. He wants me to be like other little girls…like his other daughter Izzy whose name doesn’t mean anything at all, but who does normal things like play with dolls, take dance classes, and wear dresses. I always thought dolls were stupid, I have horrible coordination, and I don’t like the feeling of air on my legs.

When I was five like Izzy, I preferred lining up rocks into geometric shapes, mostly hexagons which were my favorite. But since dad lives in Nevada and has a new family now, mom says she doesn’t care what he thinks as long as he keeps sending money. Lucky for me though, unlike Izzy, my name has meaning. Native people used to always have meaningful names using verbs and nouns about nature like “Standing Bull” or “Sways with Trees”. I don’t have much interest in verbs and nouns though, not like geometric shapes. My birth name was Piper. Which by itself doesn’t mean anything. But if you look closely, you’ll see it contains the word “Pi”. A circle is one of the most beautiful things in the world and when you divide the circumference by its diameter, no matter it’s size, you get pi. Pi is a mathematical constant, which means it’s a truth that existed back in the 1980’s, and always throughout all of time.

I like truth and consistency a lot. Those things are important to people like me with autism. Once I discovered what pi was on October 7, 2013 on the internet, I told mom, all my teachers, and the kids at school that my new name from now on was “Pi” and not “Piper”. I would also draw the Greek symbol for pi sometimes instead of writing my name, which upset all of my teachers who called a meeting with mom about it. Some of the mean kids still called me Piper because they knew it made me mad...but I didn’t care, they didn’t even know what pi was, or understand things like logarithmic spirals, and aside from that their names had no meaning at all.

Anyway, it was November 13, 2013 that I started going to the gifted classroom where I learned a lot more about math and science than I did in all my other classes. All of the kids in my new class also called me by my correct name, which was nice. It was on March 25, 2014 that I found the issue of National Geographic on the magazine rack in my classroom’s science library. I don’t usually read National Geographic, but the cover had a very unusual geometric design of a five-pointed star, which is also called a pentagram. For some reason, people are scared of pentagrams, like Izzy's mom Elsie who says she doesn’t allow them in their house because it's the sign of the devil; but all a pentagram is is five isosceles triangles wrapped around a pentagon!

Anyway, the pentagram (or five-pointed star if you are scared of pentagrams) on The National Geographic magazine was more precise and complex than any design I had ever seen before, and it was cut into the grass! When I asked my teacher Mr. Davis about it, he told me it was a crop circle. From then on, I researched everything I could find about crop circles. I learned that the most complicated crop circles are probably created by aliens; which makes sense because aliens are smarter and more advanced than humans and understand the importance of things like geometry and numbers. I sometimes feel more like an alien than a human, which makes me like crop circles even more. Most crop circles happen in England near Stonehenge, but sometimes they happen in North America, where I live.

My dream is to go to England one day to see a real crop circle. But because I’m too scared to fly in airplanes, I have been saving my money instead to buy my own wheatfield. The probability of finding a crop circle in your wheatfield in North Ameria is probably low, but if the aliens were to choose my wheatfield, I hope they would make an octahedron, a geometric solid closest to a cube. But if not, that’s okay. Since I’m only ten and can’t afford my own wheatfield yet, and neither can mom, she suggested we go to The Sacred Geometry and Crop Circle Conference for three days in New Mexico. I have only been to museums and science fairs, which were sometimes too loud and crowded, but I’d never been to a conference before, and especially not one about crop circles.

New Mexico is well known for aliens too. So it is always possible that we may be abducted at any moment, and especially while traveling on a dark highway. I wouldn’t mind that if it happened because I love talking about geometry and don’t think the aliens would become bored talking about geometry like humans always do. I think myself and the aliens would become great friends actually.

We pass the “Welcome to New Mexico” sign and I lower the volume on my MP3 player, just in case mom is listening to a commercial on the radio. But music is playing instead, so it’s safe to take off my headphones. Mom looks over at me.

“We’re in New Mexico”, I say to her even though I’m sure she saw the sign too.

“Yep, we are. Does it feel any different?”

I try to see if my body feels any different, but it feels the same as it did back in California and then Arizona.

 “No.” I say.

“Are you nervous?” Mom asks. She knows I usually don’t like new things or lots of people, which is something conferences sometimes consist of.

“No, I’m not nervous. I’m excited to meet other people like me.”

“Yep,” Mom says again. “That’s why we came, so you can see that there are other people who like geometry and crop circles as much as you do.”

“Is Westwoods Labyrinth from July 17, 2010 still your favorite crop circle?” I ask mom, smiling a little bit.

“Of course it is!” She says. This is a routine mom and I have.

“Why?” I ask her, even though I know the answer, I still like hearing it.

“Because it was the crop circle that appeared right before you were born. It should be called Pi's Labyrinth. That’s why it’s my favorite!”

I start to laugh. It doesn’t matter to mom at all that Westwoods Labyrinth was a cuboctahedron, she doesn’t care about geometry the same way I do...but I'm glad she likes crop circles, even if it's for other reasons than geometry.