Looking back at the boat that sank, and the son who knew better
July 21, 2026
by Richard Yung Chung
So… my son Simeon is a grown man now. But I still think, more often than I’d like to admit, about a boat we built together when he was in grade two.
He came home one day with a school project. A parent and child project: build a toy boat. The rules were simple. It could be big or small, pretty or ugly, made of anything at all. Only one thing mattered.
The boat had to float.
Now, a wiser father and older father, the one I am now… would have heard “parent and child” and let the child do most of the building, offering warm encouragement from a safe distance. That is not the father Simeon got. I heard “build a boat” and something took hold of me. I was going to build the finest toy boat grade two had ever seen. I was going to make my son proud to be my son.
I went to the stationery store and spent ( I am not exaggerating ) fifty dollars. On a toy boat. A plastic board, three different kinds of glue, two sharp knives, scissors, a measuring tape, drawing pens, and one thousand popsicle sticks. A thousand !
Simeon watched me haul it all in, wide eyed. He’d never seen me this excited about anything of his.
And he said, helpfully, “Dad, my teacher said we could just use a recycled plastic bottle.”
It took two days. Two sleepless nights, if I’m honest. Simeon went to bed and I kept gluing.
And what came out of it was magnificent. A large, gleaming, bright yellow ship. Sue was impressed. My daughter Yoon-Hee was impressed. I was deeply impressed with myself. And Simeon looked at it the way a boy looks at a father who has just revealed a hidden superpower.
“Dad,” he said, “you make the best boat in the world.”
And I said ( God forgive me ) “Hey. What did I tell you?”
We put two little flags on it, a Korean and a Canadian. And we very nearly named it the Titanic. I actually considered it, then thought no better not bad luck. So it went unnamed. But in my heart, it was the Titanic.
You can see where this is going. I could not.
The next morning Simeon carried it to school, glowing. The whole class agreed his was the most impressive-looking boat in the room. He came home proud. The floating test was the next day.
So that next afternoon I went to pick him up, and I could barely wait to ask. “So? How did our ship do?”
He wasn’t glowing anymore. Everyone in the class got a hundred and fifty points, he told me. He got fifty.
“Fifty? What happened?”
What happened was that our beautiful yellow ship… my fifty-dollar, thousand-popsicle-stick masterpiece… hit the water and went straight to the bottom. There were holes in the hull. It sank like a stone. It sank, I’m telling you, exactly like its namesake, while every other boat sailed calmly across the tank.
“Then why fifty points at all?”
“The teacher said it was for looking impressive.”
Fifty points. For looking impressive. From the bottom of the tank.
And the boats that earned the full hundred and fifty, the ones that actually floated, which is the one thing a boat is required to do, what were they made of?
Recycled two-litre plastic bottles. Cut in half. Free. The exact thing my seven-year-old had suggested before I told him he deserved better.
I’ve had a lot of years to think about that yellow boat, and it has only gotten sharper with time.
Because I’ve done it again and again. Not with boats. With other things. I build the impressive version. The one designed mostly to be looked at, to make me proud, to make people think hasn’t he done well and a surprising number of them turn out to have holes in the bottom. They photograph beautifully. They do not float.
The things that have actually carried me through a life have almost never been the expensive, impressive ones. They’ve been humbler. Cheaper. Often the very thing I waved off because it wasn’t grand enough for the monument I had in mind. A plain marriage. An ordinary Tuesday. A cup of coffee. A plastic bottle a child hands you.
That’s the part that stays with me now. He knew. He told me the answer, freely, and I overrode him because his answer was too simple, too humble, too recycled to match what I wanted to build. Seven years old, and wiser about boats than his father with his thousand popsicle sticks.
Sue still reminds me of this in her own way. When we argue, she’ll say, “Richard, I feel like replacing you.”
And I tell her: “You can’t replace me. I’m the original. You can recycle me but you can’t replace me.”
She hasn’t taken me up on it yet. I like to think I still float, most days. Holes and all.
But that sunken yellow boat is still down there in the back of my mind, gleaming and useless at the bottom of its tank. A reminder that impressive is not the same as seaworthy and that the thing which actually holds you up is usually the plain one you almost threw away.
Simeon got fifty points that day.
I think I got the lesson.
Richard
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Prior Newsletters from Slow Wisdom :
I Shouted At The Prime Minister … July 15th
I Told My Church I Ate Grasshoppers … July 7th
Thankful For The Hospital Food … July 1st
My Goal Was To Finish and Not Die … June 24th
The Wedding Afro … June 17th