Or perhaps engaging with this topic so practically - understanding their native language's counting system and then devising a notation - sparked an interest in what is often perceived as a useless and boring topic.

I had a few "ooh, this is not only useful, but intellectually fun" experiences with math in school. Positional number systems was one of them. Distinct aha moment. So much of what had not made sense before suddenly did, including why we had just spent weeks on logarithms. Without at least a few experiences like that, I am sure I would have been even more tuned out in class, destined to hate math for life. I found the way it was taught most of the time to be a form of low-grade torture.