I have a fabulous 12-year old grandson who lights up my world. I would do anything for this boy (provided it's not illegal or immoral). A couple times a month I get the privilege of picking him up from school where our ritual is to visit a nearby coffee shop; his usual is the strawberry banana smoothie and I enjoy my afternoon Americano.
We play 'smart games' on the internet - GeoGuessr - a virtual atmosphere moving down streets, looking at buildings, vehicles, signs and storefronts guessing where you are in the world (and we're pretty good at it!). And map quizzes - naming the correct country for a specific area such as Europe, Eurasia and Africa. We're Canadian - it doesn't take long to name the provinces in our country but matching up all 50 states in the U.S. took a bit to master.
About a year and half ago the little fella took up solving Rubik's cubes and he's a natural. Of course he's easily cajoled me into buying numerous cubes (who knew there was such a variety) and his collection now stands to close to 100. Watching his fingers in warp speed spin the layers of the cubes is amazing not to mention the number of algorithms he's memorized, just blows my mind.
The lad has entered a number of competitions and the energy at those events is wonderful. Kids of all ages gather completely oblivious to age, race or ability differences. Let this be an example of how our world as a whole should interact.
Recently he and I ventured out to a one-day competition taking a ferry (we live on an island) to the big city where over 100 competitors would compete with their 2x2s, 3x3s, pyraminx and 4x4s challenging their minds and agility. The format is brilliant - you compete only against yourself with a judge present to oversee the process - and the almighty timer.
The boy has amazing times averaging solving the typical 3x3 cube in 10 seconds. Yes seconds! I'd be lucky to solve it in 10 days or weeks would be more likely.
It was the last event of the day... the 2x2. There are five attempts with the lowest and highest times thrown out and the average of the other three being the final score. The kid was doing his personal best and on the last attempt got a mind-blowing 1.8 seconds. I was elated! Only problem was he forgot to turn on the official timer and was disqualified. He moved quickly from the gaming table packing up his stuff and I could tell he was choking back the tears. I gathered up my things, turned around and he was gone.
I found him in the parking lot sitting on the curb by the car. "You okay?" I asked. "Nona you don't understand, I was on the podium" he sobbed. I was broken-hearted for him. A simple yet costly mistake. We drove back to the hotel in silence. I just didn't know what to say that might console him. We stopped for snacks; he wanted to stay in the car.
"You know sweetie, even Olympic athletes make mistakes". He turned to me and said "Thanks but I wasn't thinking about anymore til you just brought it up". Dang... I went into the store and bought his favourite bag of chips and beverage hoping to redeem myself...
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