MISSING CHILD

When I was involved with politics back in England when I was younger, I became known for putting the community at the heart of what I did. That meant I had a lot of charities asking me to help with their causes. And of course aside from my budding political career, I am after all is said and done a human being with compassion and morals, despite what certain masked cowards would have you believe, so I became a patron of many local charities, and some national and global charities came on board too, and so we worked with them.

One day, I was asked to attend an event with very little backstory, aside from one of our charity partners had asked us to be there. When we arrived, it turned out to be a fundraiser for a charity that helped families dealing with the trauma of missing children. This particular fundraiser was in the south of England, where recently a school trip had gone terribly wrong. The school had taken a group of children to the seaside for the day, and pitched them up next to a pier. The tide had, unfortunately, come in quicker than expected, and the children, all just 9 years old, were caught up in the waves that crashed onto the sand.

But the pier was a godsend. The children, young as they were, were clever enough and old enough to think to grab hold of the struts tightly as the sea dragged them out, and so they were all accounted for when the coastguard arrived minutes later. Except one.

The one child who had not grabbed hold of the struts was now missing. No body had been found, even three months later, and so the fundraiser, more than anything else, was almost a fundraiser for closure, rather than any real rescue mission hope.

And as I stood there, nodding and listening to the father of that child talking to me about his poor son, I couldn’t help but silently think to myself: survival of the fittest. The other kids had survived because of their instinct. His son was weak and lacked that instinct, and now his son was missing presumed dead. And though yes, it was sad, and yes, in many ways it was nobody’s fault, in reality just that bit of gumption would have seen him through, like his classmates.

People who go missing, Jessie, are weak and pathetic. To end up in that position means you showed a lack of either judgement, skill, or both. That’s why, just like then, though I can nod and pat your arm, I can’t really feel true empathy. Ash Williams went missing because he was not strong enough to survive, and at Octane I will prove the old saying, “like father, like son” is true, when I wipe you clear as competition.

And the people will weep for you, and hang their posters. Maybe they’ll even fundraise. But they’ll never get past that niggling feeling that maybe you went missing because – like your Dad – you just weren’t good enough.