Same for me, except I was forty-something. I captured something of the experience after stumbling on the “duncan beach ball puzzle”. After memorizing the moves for the cube I read a lot about how a person could solve the puzzle (and ones like it) from scratch. So then I went looking for other permutation puzzles to try the technique. The technique was basically do some sequence of moves, then one move, then undo the sequence. After that notice what 2 or 3 elements swapped places in the permutation. Everything else remains the same. This was easy enough with the beach ball and the classic 15 puzzle. Give it a try!