This was something that happened during the first half of 2010 when Evan was still a first-grader.
Every couple of weeks, Evan's class would have Mad Math Minute on a Friday when the kids were given a sheet of plus and minus questions. They were supposed to solve these questions as fast as they could to see who would answer the most questions correctly within a minute.
Evan has one of the best hand writing in his class however he writes slowly so he was at a disadvantage when it came to Mad Math Minute. I remember he said he got 15 questions right the first time he took it. Since it was a regular activity they did, we noticed that a couple of names always came up when he mentioned about it. One is an Indian boy whose name is Anish. He was almost always number one. When Evan was at 15 questions, he was at over 45. Another one was a girl named Courtney, she was number two on a regular basis behind Annish.
Even though there was a big gap between Evan and Anish and Courtney, he developed an interest in competing in the Mad Math Minute. We told him that he needed to write as fast as he could when he answered questions but not too fast that his teacher couldn't recognize his answers. Evan was getting better and better, from answering 20+ questions correctly to 30+ and then into 40s and 50s and he was always eager to tell me and Daddy how he did after each Mad Math Minute without us asking. We were very happy about the progress he made and before we knew it, Evan, Anish and Courtney became the top three on a regular basis, however whether Anish was number one or number two, Evan had never beat Anish.
We told Evan we were proud of what he had achieved, although we never specifically pushed him to be number one. Regardless, it soon became apparent that "beating Anish" became Evan's goal. He didn’t get frustrated if he fell behind, instead he just reported to us calmly: "Anish did better than me this time again." and went on trying to beat him the next time. The funny thing was because we talked about it after every Mad Math Minute, Daddy and I unconsciously developed this secret desire of Evan beating Anish as well and we started to ask Evan how he did as soon as we saw him on a Mad Math Minute day, haha…
Finally one day after I came back to my desk from a late meeting, I noticed I had a voice mail and turned out it was from Evan.
"Hi, mom!" he started, then I heard Daddy encouraged him to speak up in the background. "Hi, mom, you know what? I beat Anish today in Mad Math Minute! He got 45 and I got 47! Courtney got 48 so she was number one but I beat Anish for the first time! Daddy asked me to give you a call, uh…bye-bye!"
This was the first voice mail I received from Evan. I could tell he was very excited and proud of himself. He just sounded so cute on the phone that I wish I could save that voice mail forever! I was so happy and proud of him! J
