2024 is the 50th anniversary of the invention of the #RubiksCube ... something that used to get people like me slammed into lockers by bullies if they saw you playing with one ... It's been decades since I tried to solve one because I have trauma associated with people hating on me and beating me up at camp for carrying one around. I think I'll buy one today ... and reclaim that joy.

https://www.rubiks.com/history

@thewebrecluse
So many students I teach nowadays are obsessed with them.

@voltronic I used to be as well ... and then just seeing one would trigger me in all kinds of bad ways. I was unable to even look at one again.

@thewebrecluse
Sorry that's the reaction it gives you.

@voltronic Trauma does that. A lot of things that are popular these days were very unpopular or got you into trouble ... DnD, Rubik's, being ND or different etc ... It's cool to see people being able to enjoy things that got me beat up as a kid ... Today I'm going to buy myself a cube and have some fun with it. 👍🏾

@thewebrecluse @voltronic

Reclaim that cube. It's a fun time. :)

@evistre @voltronic Oh I will! 🎉

The trifecta of lost fun has arrived🤣 Looking forward to reclaiming the joy of trying to solve these. Having #aphantasia makes it impossible and that was always part of the struggle and the fun ... I think it will be even more impossible now. 👍🏾

When I was younger Rubiks were like all the rage for a period of time. Everyone had one even if they could never solve them. As with most things that involved things like LOGIC and several out of 12 different kinds of intelligence, their existence pissed off people who threatened by the idea of not being able to brute force their way to achieving success. As a result, a lot of kids like myself who were drawn to exercises of the mind, got bullied by those who had no control over their own.

1/

I got bullied a lot ... for different reasons and I found that even if I made myself as invisible as possible (which was hard considering there were only about 10 Black people in the school I went to) and just minded my own business, it was still enough to piss off the psychopaths I went to school with. Reading, playing with a Rubik's Cube, or doing anything that indicated you had a functional brain seemed to just automatically make crazy people angry ... even if you were not bothering them.

2/

My dad always said to me, and still does, that maybe if I wasn't intelligent, my life would have been easier. This usually has shades of the fact that I deserved all the beatings and whippings and abuse I received because I couldn't manage to learn my place ... and I think even now, people are constantly threatened by strong women with minds of their own - especially strong Black women. They are somehow automatically entitled even just by existing and speaking their minds.

3/

#Aphantasia wasn't a thing when I was growing up. I knew that I couldn't do certain things and I knew that I saw the world way differently than everyone else as a #synesthete ... but there were no words for everything I was experiencing ... just words like "broken" and "crazy" or "retarded" and "stupid" existed to explain all the differences in how moved through and perceived the world and how everyone else did.

It was a rough time ...

4/

I believed, at that time, that there was a way of "fixing" my brain. I believed that I could become like everyone else if I was smart enough. I believed that the way I saw things, the way I understood things, the black hole in my mind, the colors, the smells ... it was all because my brain wasn't fully developed or something. I thought if I trained it, if I exercised it, if I tried to expand my mind ... somehow I'd become "normal" and able to do things and have a normal life and mind.

5/

Of course ... it's IMPOSSIBLE to solve a Rubik's Cube if you have #aphantasia and even more so if you have #dyscalculia ... in fact I'd say that there is no way in hell I could ever be able to solve one.

But I didn't know that then.

That didn't stop me from trying as a kid ... it didn't stop me from having fun trying ...

After all the bullying and all the failings and all of the geek and nerd hatred I experienced growing up, certain things got sacrificed ... Rubik's was one.

6/

When I saw it was the 50th anniversary of the Rubik's Cube ... I thought ... I'm 50+ years old and I haven't touched one or "played" with one since I was a pre-teen and I started thinking how ridiculous and fucked up that was ... how sad it was ...

I know now that I'll never be able to solve one. I know that my brain is just different ... not broken ... just different but that those differences mean I have to accept certain limitations.

I know it's pointless to try.

But it will still be fun.

So, I'm not much younger than you, but your life seems like a mirror of mine. A mirror with a "Black" filter on it. Especially since I was always treated as "basically a woman" because I never conformed to what the closed-minded knuckle-draggers expected of a Man. Reactionary, Violent, Covetous, Confident in my own (imagined) Superiority. I refused to treat others as less than equal, and I was always empathetic. This meant I was obviously "Weak (like a woman)".

1/?

@thewebrecluse

I never had a problem like Synesthesia or Dys-anything, and that made things a little easier. But I've spent my entire life being seen as "different" or "weird". I can't even remember how many times I've had people on the street I don't even know yell out a car window or laugh loudly and point at me while saying "Queer" or "Faggot".

I've never been attracted to Men, or even acted as though I was, but that doesn't stop Dunning-Kruger adherents.

2/?

@thewebrecluse

Just being Intellectual got me attacked, tormented, etc.

I beat one such idiot (a teacher's son), across the face with a Trapper Keeper and broke his nose, because I couldn't take it anymore.

I was told hundreds of times by people who didn't have the capacity of independent thought that I am "going to Hell" for "being Gay" or "having long hair" or "playing D&D"...whatever their Pastor had been regurgitating that week in Church.

3/?

@thewebrecluse