His numbers are 'precious,' but not as much as his acting career

WASILLA -- Shelly Menzia's Finger Lake classroom has all the usual elements for teaching first-graders: There are the buckets of glue, piles of books and letters of the alphabet gracing the walls along with brightly colored drawings. Near Menzia's desk sits a tub of papers, each with tattered and bent edges, rolled to form a scroll. They all look similar -- but one stands out. This scroll, comprised of dozens of pages of hand-written numbers in sequence, nearly tumbles out of the tub, its rolls struggling to unwind and spill onto the floor. It belongs to 7-year-old Tegan Harrington. Each page of Tegan's scroll is either taped or stapled to the next, each one holds 100 penciled numbers, smudged by the youngster's hands as the numbers climb up and up, all the way to 7,300.

"He's figured out the pattern," Menzia said, about Tegan's accomplishment of writing hundreds more numbers on his scroll than his classmates.

Although each student in Menzia's class is required to write on their number scrolls, Tegan didn't exceed his classmates by writing pages and pages of numbers out of boredom or on a whim -- it was to reach a very specific goal.

"Someone else got to 6,500. He's a grown-up now and it was my goal to beat him, and I accomplished my goal," the 7-year-old said matter-of-factly.

The person Tegan referred to, according to his mother, Lana Harrington, is the father of a classmate.

"His classmate's dad had reached 6,500 [on his number scroll], and he said he wanted to beat that. I told him to go for it," Harrington said.

Anytime he has nothing to do in class, Tegan said, when his other work is done and he has free time, for instance, he works on his number scroll. "But I don't take it home."

He said he learned his numbers from playing Yu-gi-oh, a dueling card game. The actions of each of the card characters have numbers associated with them, and playing the game helped Tegan expand his knowledge of numbers, he said.

"That's how I know about my thousands," Tegan said.

Reaching his goal has not been without rewards, either.

"I got to go to Mr. Nufer's (the principal's office), and get candy and bus passes and stuff," he said.

First-graders are expected to be able to read and write numerals up to 100, and most of Tegan's classmates have written into the low thousands, but a determined Tegan set the bar high.

"I want to get good, I just never gave up and I kept on doing it," he said.

Tegan's mother said her one and only child excels in other areas as well.

"He's a smart little bugger," she said, relating how he emptied his piggy bank when he was a mere 3 1/2 years old and counted it -- nearly $60 in change. Tegan is reading at a third-grade level, Harrington said, and they rarely miss an opportunity to incorporate learning into play time. For instance when they play Horse Basketball they use additional words to practice spelling.

Tegan admits that his academics aren't perfect -- but they are close, he said.

"I only messed up three times, two on spelling and once on homework -- but I corrected it," he said.

The fair-haired boy with the quick grin said his life goal has little to do with numbers, however -- unless you put dollar signs in front of them.

"I want to be an actor or a star," Tegan said. "I like to be scary and sometimes funny," he added, making several grimacing expressions as he released a gutteral "my precious" from deep in his throat.

"Oh yeah, an actor or a star," his mother later said. "That's my boy -- don't tell me he did his Gollum impression!"

Indeed he did.