The Weirdest (and funniest) cubing day of my life
Sol Sutter (14, USA)
Today I’m going to tell you a story of perhaps the weirdest (and funniest) cubing day of my life. It was your typical Monday morning, bad hair, didn’t finish my homework, woke up late and overall I knew this day was going to be terrible. I quickly took a shower, threw some gel in my hair and I grabbed my cubes from my shelf and ran out to the bus which I almost missed (the bus was early…I wasn’t late 😉 . The bus ride was long, but with my cubes it felt like just a few minutes. As I was getting off the bus, a non-cuber came up to me just watched me for a little bit as if he was trying to decipher me.
“I know that you fake solving that,” he said pointing to the Qiyi Thunderclap V2 that was in my hands, “You just do the same things over and over again.
I looked up at him confused and I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
“No, I can actually solve this,” I said trying to not laugh, “My best time is 13.87 seconds. I actually got it over the weekend. I was so lucky because I got an OLL skip and a A-per…”
“Let me mix it up then,” he declared, interrupting me as he ripped the cube out of my hand. He turned his back towards me as he scrambled it. Oh non-cubers I thought. It had already been almost a minute now and he still wasn’t done. I decided I would wait just a little bit longer.
“Alright time’s up,” I said I as I reached for my cube.
“Fine,” he took my cube and shoved it into my hands,”Solve that.” he expressed very rudely, smirking. I took a quick look at the cube and started solving. For anyone that has tried solving while walking in a crowd… you know the struggle. As I got to OLL I realized something… he had flipped an edge! As I tried to fix it, he looked at me and said something, mocking me.
“LOL. I knew you couldn’t solve it.” and walked back to his friends. This was just the beginning of weird and funny things that had happened that day. I walked into school and headed straight for band which one of of my cubing friends also took. I sat down next him quickly pulling out a mini AoLong I had gotten for OH. I had only been cubing for about two and a half months and averaged about 18 seconds, (two hands) so I was still a beginner.
“Let me try that,” he asked (not very politely),” I’ve heard a lot of good stuff about that cube.”
Why not I thought and handed him the cube. He spammed some T-perms on it and after a couple minutes he finally said something.
“Dude, do you know what I just realized” he exclaimed, “ That Feliks Zemdegs isn’t that good at OH.”
I looked at him, confused and didn’t know if he was making a joke.
“Are you serious?” I laughed ,“He is one of the best in the world!”
“No, I don’t think he has ever had a world record for average or single,” he said very confidently,” He averages like…18 seconds for OH.”
I looked at him in disbelief. I quickly pulled out my phone and searched W.C.A results to show him.
“Now do you see,” I said as I showed him that he had WR single and NAR average, ”He is really good at OH.”
“Oh wow,” he exclaimed, “How did I not know of this?”
All of band class I sat wondering just how he didn’t know this. Let’s skip forward the middle of the day. The bell rang for lunch and I quickly ran out the door. I sat down at my normal lunch table (was close to and empty space where people bought their lunches) with my friends and took out a cube. Almost right after I took it out, a very short 7th grader came over to me (i’m in 8th grade).
“Can I use that?” he asked with his eyes wide open.
I saw no problem with it, so I handed over the cube to him. I turned back to my lunch and heard him saying stuff like “This thing is nice and lubed up” and “You could breathe on this and it would move.” Trying to ignore that I took a bite of my sandwich. I turn around a few minutes later and then I saw it happen. My cube had just exploded all over the empty space where people bought their lunches.
“Sorry,” he said ,”I didn’t even mean to.”
This had caught just about everyone’s attention in the whole cafeteria and everybody was laughing at me. I quickly picked up the pieces very embarrassed and sat quietly back at my seat.
“I’m sorry I broke it.” he said quietly, “I can buy you another one”
“It’s not actually broken. I can just put it back together,” I told him, “You just have to pop the pieces back in.”
“I’m still buying you one,” he exclaimed without a pause, “I feel really bad about it.”
He insisted that he buy another one, and now to this day I have two of those cubes. But let’s get back to that day. Where was I……oh of course. Later in the day I went a class called Directed Study but most people know of it as Study Hall. There is one kid in my class that is interested in Rubik’s cubes but can’t solve one. I was using my 5×5 when he came up to me and told me something really weird.
“What the %# !” he yelled, “I thought a 5×5 had five sides. Like the 4 cube has like….four sides!”
After all the funny stuff that had happened that day I wasn’t even that surprised. I simply stared at him and didn’t say anything, thinking that knowing that Rubik’s Cube has six sides was an essential for life.
“No, it has six and has always had six,” I said, very disappointed. But then I realized he was joking because he was laughing his head off. Too many things have happened today I thought, People are getting in my head. I couldn’t wait to get home to relax.
DING, DING,DING. Finally, school is over I thought. I ran to the bus and couldn’t wait to get home. While on the bus I realized how funny the day had been and thought Well…it wasn’t that bad. I was just glad it was over. To this day that has been the funniest cubing related day of my entire life.