At the end of eighth grade, my homeroom teacher marched us into the cafeteria and handed out number two pencils. We sat at long bench tables covered in graffiti scratches and filled in circles on endless pieces of paper. Define the word "rubicon." In the diagramed sentence, which word is the verb? What is the product of 3,451 and 6,788? I glanced across the table at my best friend and we both shrugged our shoulders. We didn't realize this test would seal our fate over the next four years.

I forgot about the test that summer, and my best friend and I explored the firefly fields behind my house and rode banana seat bikes down Cold Spring Hill and picked blackberries in Mrs. Dickenson's garden until our fingers turned purple. We slept in the screen gazebo in my friend's backyard and watched the night sky for falling stars. We bought push-up popsicles at the penny candy store and sat on the Revolutionary War cannon in the middle of the town common, watching boys and daring each other to do crazy things. And somewhere during that summer my father brought home a puzzle in the shape of a cube, each side a grid work of different color, and bet me one hundred dollars I couldn't find a solution. I stuck the cube in my closet. Summer wasn't a time for thinking, and my friend and I had frogs to catch and boys to trail.

The first day of ninth grade brought a new hell to my life. Those tests were graded and the results determined which classes we could take. My best friend showed me her schedule: Latin, Pre-Algebra, Honors English, and History. I didn't show her mine. I told her I forgot my classes. But the truth was that I was ashamed. I didn't get placed in Latin and Pre-Algebra like the smart kids. I had to take French and General Math and Social Studies with the dopes and potheads. My father took one look at my books and marched me back to school. Birdie should be in the top classes, he demanded. But my principal shook his head and showed my dad the bottom line. I scored poorly on the test, in the bottom ten-percent of my class, and I belonged where I belonged.

I learned how to say Yes and No and My name is Birdie in French while my best friend learned the secret roots of modern language. I read excerpts from easy stories like Jonathon Livingston Seagull in my thick literature text while my best friend got to read books with dirty words like Catcher in the Rye. I sat through hours of long division and adding fractions while my best friend got to learn about x and y. One day I waited by the band room back door at the end of school. I waited for an hour while sitting on my saxophone case. My best friend never showed and I found out later she walked home with another smart girl.

That night I threw all my best friend's things in my closet. My autograph book with her handwritten poems, the red hair brush she left in my bathroom, the ceramic pig she brought me from a family vacation - everything tossed into a linty back corner in a fit of sadness and rage. I started closing the door but noticed the cube on the shelf above my coat, and I grabbed it and sat on my bed. Twist, twist, turn, turn, I rotated layer after layer, mixing the primary colors into a patchwork of red, blue, green, orange, yellow, and white. Six sides, each a conglomeration of nine smaller colored cubes, a big mess of a puzzle. I saw some of the older kids at school compete in timed trials, and knew that the radio station held contests for the quickest solution from disaster to perfection.

Click. Twist. Turn. Click. I stared and rotated and stared some more, but the cube mocked me, didn't line up in perfect unison color. Twist. I hate my stupid NOT best friend! Click. I hate school! Twist. I hate French! Turn. I can't do anything! I threw the cube against the wall and hit my Dukes of Hazzard poster. I cried myself to sleep, just a dumb girl with no friends who can't do anything even a stupid dumb cube puzzle, a pity party of a cry. That night I dreamed I could fly, I had golden wings, and they carried me above my school, past Cold Spring Hill, all to way to a cube castle. A hundred knights on horses used long lances to push and poke the walls, and they rotated and clicked, a different design on each cube. I flew around the castle, watched the motions of the knights, watched the cubes fall into perfect place and then BAM! The castle fell.

The next morning I sat up in bed and grabbed the cube. Click. Twist. Turn. I was a knight in a horseback bed; my fingers just lances, rotate, turn, click, and my castle cube followed the movement I remembered from my dream. Click. Complete. I stuck the cube in my saxophone case and walked to school. I took it out during math and while everyone else figured common denominators I practiced my solution, getting faster and faster, over and over, scattered cubes then ordered cubes, one, two, three, four times, and only stopped when I saw my math teacher standing over me, one hand on his hip, the other rubbing his nose.

"Birdie, where did you learn that solution? I haven't seen that one before, it's not the common one kids are using. You're taking a lot less steps to complete it." He took the cube from me and mixed it up then handed it back. I flew through my magic knight motions and handed it back to him in much less than a minute.

"I don't know," I answered. "I just thought it up this morning."

My teacher told me to collect my stuff and he walked me across the hall to the smart math class. He whispered something to the teacher and she glanced at me out of the sides of her eyes. She pointed to a chair near the back of the room and I sauntered back and sat down. My ex-best friend didn't turn to look at me, but everyone else did.

Later that day, during the long walk home, the cute boy down the street carried my saxophone case for me while I twisted and turned and clicked, showing him my special cube solution. And as we passed under the canopy of the corner maple, I turned my head and stuck out my tongue at that no-good-two-timing-ex-friend of mine. It felt good.

****

Does anyone still care about the Rubik's Cube? Such a child of the 70's, a forgotten pasttime. I remember winning the local radio Twist it Quick competition and wearing my Rubik's Cube t-shirt until it fell apart. I strolled through the BlogHer blogrolls and nearly fainted with surprise when I found women talking - and blogging - about La Cube this very week:

Willzmom blogs about the greatest inventions of all time in her blog, Lots of Little Things, and notes that CNN.com places Rubik's Cube in the mix.

Mrs. Brocolli Guy notes that You are as old as she is if:

54. You still know the Big Mac song. “Two all beef patties, special sauce…”
55. You owned a real Rubik’s Cube
56. You used to own a Snoopy Sno Cone Machine.
57. You have a tendency to turn the collar up on your Polo shirts.

Damn! She's got me nailed!

And too many blogs to mention posted the currently viral YouTube video of a robot solving Rubik's masterpiece. Ay yi yi, Robot Man, you make it look too simple!

Have you ever wrestled with the cube?

Birdie Jaworski blogs at La Pajaro, and can still do the Rubik's Cube in 27 moves.