⧉ Faking it
Welcome to the thirty-second issue of OVERLAP ⧉
Faking it
I was probably nine. Maybe 10. No more than 11. My cousins were visiting from out west and we were all playing at my grandmother’s house. Grandma kept going on and on about how smart my younger cousin was; she had solved a Rubik’s Cube all by herself.
I turned the plastic cube over in my hands, admiring the solid grid of bright rectangles on each side. It must be easy, I said. I’m going to do it, too. Grandma loved the perfect cube and warned me against messing it up — but, of course, I twisted it, jumbling the rectangles. Then I set about trying to put the colors back together again.
You can guess what happened next. I was definitely never going to solve that thing, but I couldn’t deal with Grandma gushing over my cousin’s cleverness — especially if the story was going to end with me making a mess of everything.
So … I did what I had to do. I locked myself in the bathroom, carefully peeled each colorful sticker off the cube, then put them all back in perfect order. When I emerged, the problem was solved. I’m pretty sure Grandma realized she’d been duped, because I don’t remember her being all that impressed.
Decades later, I confessed my sin to my cousin, who admitted she had done the same damn thing in the first place. Did you really think I knew what I was doing? We both laughed. That explained why the stickers were so easy to peel off.
If there’s a moral to this story — and I like to think there is — it’s probably this: Genius is a scam. Everyone is faking it.
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Austin Kleon, an author and artist I follow on Twitter, posted about the satisfaction that comes along with solving the Rubik’s Cube puzzle. (He did it the legitimate way, not the Hibbard way.) I’m not sure I would have recalled my vintage 1980s Rubik’s Cube memory if I hadn’t seen his story. The internet is useful sometimes.
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Auntie Jess recommends:
Five-spice powder. Most people use this blend of spices on meat and savory dishes. I made five-spice cookies and they were delicious.
A good laser printer. I tried living without a printer at home for a couple of years, but eventually broke down and got a black-and-white laser printer; it’s worth it.
Cloth napkins. It’s nice when an everyday luxury is guilt-free.
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Thanks for reading. I’d love to hear from you — hit reply or send a message through my website to tell me about your favorite cookie spices, sustainable luxuries, or anything else that’s on your mind. You can also forward this to a friend or two and invite them to subscribe. If you missed a previous issue, all the archives are online.
Until next time,
Jessica
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