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Racing Paper Boats in the Gutter with Ken Shimabuku

Posted on December 5, 2024December 5, 2024 by

One of my fondest childhood memories was when I was maybe ten or eleven in suburban Pleasanton, California. It must have been autumn, because the leaves had fallen, it had been raining steadily, but it was still pretty warm out.

Ken Shimabuku was an acquaintance at my school who seemed like the coolest kid ever. First off, he was Japanese-American, which was way cooler than being Filipino, as far as I was concerned. And he seemed to have all the neatest Japanese toys in his room — transforming robots, action figures, manga, etcetera.

We never really played together. But if there was a big party or a sleepover, we were both often there. So I don’t know why Ken and I would be hanging out on a rainy afternoon.

Nevertheless, I remember us making little paper boats and then racing them down the rain-fillled gutters all over our neighborhood. It was just mesmerizing watching the little boats speed down the gutter, weave around obstacles, pirouette around each other, and eventually get caught in the storm drain. We’d fish them out and look for another street to race them down.

This might have lasted 15 minutes or three hours, I don’t know. But it has esconsced in my brain for four decades as one of those mundane but magical childhood moments.

I wonder if Ken remembers that day?


CREDIT: AI-generated image by ChatGPT / Dall-E in November 22, 2024, Prompt “A photorealistic image of two Asian boys crouching by a street gutter in the rain, intently watching two paper boats floating in the water.”

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