I did the Rubik’s cube in 26 seconds in my home back in 1982 when I was 15.
That was about the world record at the time but I didn’t do it at an official contest and nobody saw me do it except for my own two eyes.
I think if I kept at it I could have been really good at the thing and broken some records, but so what, it was a crazy amount of time spent staring at the darn puzzle and I knew there was more to life than a cube record. The HVAC company where I worked had a cube and I did it in 20 seconds one time when I was working on an air conditioner in the storeroom one day. A few people saw me do it, but so what, it was just for fun and the world record of 8 seconds was way out of reach for me. The heating rep told me the other day that the world record for the cube is now under 3.5 seconds, which is just insane if you think about it. I could sit in front of my fireplace the rest of my life working on the cube and never come close to that time. I bet the fastest I could do it if I really worked on it would be about 15 seconds. My furnace broke the other day and I was doing my cube waiting for the heating tech to come by and help me, and I ended up doing the cube in 23 seconds that day.