This article presents a story of Robert Andrew's mental engagement with mathematics. It has been jointly written by Robert, who is a Y8 student, and his father, Paul Andrews, who is a mathematics educator. It starts with Robert who presents the context for the story and is followed by Paul's commentary which draws on what Robert has written. Embedded in the story is a series of tasks with which the majority of secondary students could engage meaningfully. The tasks justify why, for example, teachers teach elementary number theory, because, for most children, the learning of multiples, factors and primes is purposeless and rarely related to anything meaningful, least of all the multiples, factors and primes themselves and their relationships to all integers. Further, the opportunity it gives for children to explore deductive reasoning, proof and the nature of knowing provides an intellectual warrant for the study of mathematics that is lacking in English curricular documents.