Aaargh. It won't work?!
The Little Boom yelled from somewhere on the floor where Little Booms lived.
Sup honky?
I said absentmindedly as I attempted to learn the Tornado of Souls riff on guitar.
which I am finding as hard as fuck and hope fervently that it is not a sign of getting old.
Help! HELP ME!!
Something brightly coloured bounced off the floor beside my beautiful feet and I stopped chugging for a moment.
What is it?
I asked of the Little Boom who was glaring at both the object and me with murder in his slightly psychotic five-year-old eyes.
The woobix cube doesn't work. It's all mixed up. Can you help me, Daddy?
He picked up the coloured thing which I now saw to be a Rubix cube and nudged it at my hands like a sheep nosing for hazelnuts.
Oh fuck. A fucking Rubix cube. The bane of my childhood. I remember one of my friends Dyno could do it in less than a minute and literally used every available moment to fucking fiddle with the damn thing and then triumphantly shout finished! about tenteen times a day.
I always imagined him losing his virginity and proudly shouting 'finished!' eighteen seconds into the deed. Prick.
I had only ever managed two sides and even then I half thought that I might have cheated somehow.
Gently, I placed my guitar on its stand as if it were more precious to me than any of my brood and nervously took the infernal cube from my son's hands.
Erm, I ain't too sure little dude. I think I can only do a side?
I turned it over in my hands. It was a right fucking mess. It was jumbled to fuck like a hoarder's bedroom.
No Daddy, not one side. Fix it. I love it and it doesn't work!? Can't you fix it... pleeeeeaaase?
The Little Boom gave me the big eyes of parent doom.
I turned the cube over a few times in my hand.
I dunno, dude. Maybe there is a tutorial or something on YouTube. I mean, I could try?
Something inside me farted and disconcertingly flumped about at the thought.
Yay! Daddy is going to fix it back to the way it was! When Daddy? When?
The Little Boom was giving me that look that all Dads hate. The one that says, my Daddy is amazing and can fix anything when in my case I was lucky if I could fix them up some hot dogs on a Thursday when the Good Lady was working late.
Ok then, I will see what I can do.
Inwardly I huffed at how far the gods have fallen and picked up my phone to start watching shitty YouTube Rubix cube tutorial videos.
...some eternity later...
Bloody hell, what's all this shouting?
The Good Lady popped her head around the bedroom door and did a double take that I was wrestling with a Rubiks cube and not my very own purple puzzler.
It's these fucking tutorial videos?! They all show you step by step and then when it gets to a certain point they do some fancy flicky move that they don't show you and presto its solved?! BASTARDS!!
I threw the half-solved cube on the bed and gazed up at the Good Lady forlornly.
I can't bloody do it.
I sniffed as a thought of Dyno popped into my head doing two cubes at once and shouting FINISHED!
The Good Lady sat down beside me and rested an arm on my shoulder.
It's ok, I don't think he really thought you could do it. He was just being hopeful.
Her words, meant as a comfort, scraped at my raw un-cube-solving soul.
He didn't think I could??
I picked up the fucking colour cube of despair and rudely shoved the Good Lady away.
Begone woman. No one doubts the Boomster.
A laugh bubbled out of her.
See you downstairs, dinner will be out in a mo.
The door to the lounge crashed open and the family all looked up from their troughs in surprise as I strutted up to the table where they all sat.
You have a funny look on your face, are you alright?
The Good Lady looked up at me with concern.
I pulled the devil cube from behind my back and brandished it at them.
FINISHED!