I am starting to learn some things about Uncle Jake that are very important to understand. While yesterday I learned not to celebrate too early, today I realized something else: Good is never good enough! Today was a perfect example.
I was sitting down in the afternoon while Uncle Jake was at the store. I decided to watch some TV, which is something I haven’t exactly had a lot of time to do lately! When Uncle Jake got home and saw me sitting there watching TV, he didn’t look very happy with me. At all.
“What are you doing, Marc?” he asked with a disappointed tone.
“Just sitting here watching some TV.”
“I can see that. Why? Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“Well, we already worked out today. And my room is clean. And I did the dishes and cleaned the kitchen. So I’m pretty much all caught up with everything.”
“Really? What about your times tables?”
“My times tables?” I had been hoping he would ask that! I had been studying hard and knew all the tables from one to thirteen by heart at this point. “I know all of them. Every flash card. One hundred percent.”
“One hundred percent? Good. Go get them.”
“The flash cards?”
“Yes, the flash cards. I will be the judge.”
“Okay.” I ran up to my room to get my flash cards. When I came back down, Uncle Jake was pulling something out of his gym bag. It looked like a big watch.
“What’s that?” I asked him.
“A stopwatch.”
“A what?”
“A stopwatch. To time you.”
“Time me?”
“Yes. Time you. To see if you are fast enough.”
“Fast enough? This isn’t a race!” I complained.
“Everything is a race,” replied Uncle Jake with an evil smile on his face. “Give me the cards.”
Hesitating and a little nervous, I handed the cards to Uncle Jake. We sat down at the table.
“Ready?” Uncle Jake asked.
“Ready,” I replied, starting to feel the pressure.
“GO!!!!” He pressed the start button on the stopwatch and held up the first card. It was 5 × 3.
“Fifteen!” I said. He held up the next card, which read: 2 × 4.
“Eight,” I barked.
He held up the next card. He held up 9 × 6, which for some reason, maybe the pressure or the stopwatch, I blanked on for a few seconds. Then I dug through my brain and remembered. “Fifty-four!” I yelled.
“Slow,” Uncle Jake said as he held up the next card.
We went through the whole pile. There were some that I hesitated on, and I actually missed two, but since I corrected them before he could even put them back in the pile, that meant I didn’t have to answer them again. As soon as I finished, Uncle Jake slapped down the last card and pressed stop on the stopwatch.
I raised my hands over my head. “Yes!” I called out—I was SUPER EXCITED that I had gotten every one of the cards right.
“‘Yes’ what?” Uncle Jake asked me. Now I knew from the first pull-up I did that I should never celebrate too early. But this wasn’t early. The mission was accomplished—or so I thought.
“Well, Uncle Jake, I’m excited because I made it through all the times tables. That means I learned. Thanks so much for helping me, Uncle Jake. I couldn’t have done it without your help.”
“That’s not true. I only helped you learn one group of numbers; you learned the rest on your own. Once you learned how to learn, you learned on your own.”
“I guess that’s kinda true,” I said, not sure where Uncle Jake was heading with this conversation.
“But you aren’t done yet.”
“I’m not?”
“No. It took you six minutes and thirty-seven seconds to get through the flash cards. You should be doing it in less than four minutes.”
“Four minutes? Really?”
“Really,” Uncle Jake replied. “I want you to know these answers so well that there isn’t any hesitation whatsoever. None. Understand?”
“Yes. I understand.”
Uncle Jake continued, “And that is the way you should do everything—the absolute best you can. Give it everything you’ve got. One hundred percent. That will get you where you want to be.”
And with that, I started studying again, now timing myself using Uncle Jake’s stopwatch. I was GOING TO GET THERE!
