Rubik's Cube of tears and pain

The boy child bought a Rubik's Cube the other day. He'd been talking about getting one for a while, and finally saved up enough money. As he was playing with it in the car on the way home, he told me excitedly, "Now I just have to do the reverse of everything I just did and it'll be back the way it was!"

You can see where this is going, can't you?

Shortly after we returned home, I looked over to find the boy child sobbing quietly. I asked him what was wrong, and he explained that the cube was all mixed up and he couldn't fix it. I told him that was what was supposed to happen -- you mix it all up and then it might take you quite a while to solve it, but that's the challenge. And while he was relieved, he was still sad. So I told him that I bet if we Googled "rubik's cube solution" we would find all sorts of web pages telling how to solve it. And he asked me if we could do that, and so we did.

Most of the instructions were pretty complicated to my eye, but the boy child read some of them over, and with a little verbal reinforcement from me he began to realize that (a) the instructions work regardless of the current state of one's Rubik's Cube, (b) no matter how mixed up it gets, it is absolutely solvable, and (c) there are umpteen bajillion different methods for solving it.

Then he started playing with it some more and noticing the patterns and the "rules" for how it worked. He very excitedly pointed out to me that the center cubes don't move, so whatever color the center cube is is the color that side will have to be. And the corner pieces have three colors on them, so you have to line those up so they match with the center cubes.

He hasn't solved it yet, but I'm not entirely sure he's trying to anymore. He's having too much fun figuring out his own patterns and configurations. He told me yesterday that if he ever does solve it, he'll likely mix it all up right away and start trying again.