![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Straight up --
So I always get these cards in the mail along with all those advertisements. I'm sure you get them too. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children puts pictures of kids on them along with the adult they were last seen with in hopes of getting tips on their locations. In bold type across the bottom of the thing, it tells me "Over 110 children featured have been safely recovered."
Setting aside for the moment the fact that "over 110" is a figure that is both uncomfortably precise (it pretty much tells me "between 111 and 120") and distressingly low (given how many of these things come through my box -- don't get me wrong, any missing child found is a fantastic thing, but this can't be an encouraging percentage), today's card hit me right between the eyes.
On the left is a picture of a pleasant-looking young man. On the right is a picture of a guy who looks so much like him it can only be his father. The left-hand picture has been age-progressed, so the missing kid is a little older now than he was when he disappeared. Glance down at the details. The missing child is 17. He's been missing since 1987.
Fox does a double-take. They give the vital stats, the height and weight of this kid at the age of two, as if that'll have any bearing on what he looks like now.
Fifteen years. Fifteen years this guy's been missing. So basically they're looking for a blond, blue-eyed seventeen-year-old who probably has no earthly idea his father kidnapped him all those years ago. Does anybody seriously think they'll find him? If he happens to get one of these cards in his mailbox and recognize his own age-progressed face on it, will he call the number and say No, I'm not missing at all, and that's not my name?
This is very unhappiness-making ...
Setting aside for the moment the fact that "over 110" is a figure that is both uncomfortably precise (it pretty much tells me "between 111 and 120") and distressingly low (given how many of these things come through my box -- don't get me wrong, any missing child found is a fantastic thing, but this can't be an encouraging percentage), today's card hit me right between the eyes.
On the left is a picture of a pleasant-looking young man. On the right is a picture of a guy who looks so much like him it can only be his father. The left-hand picture has been age-progressed, so the missing kid is a little older now than he was when he disappeared. Glance down at the details. The missing child is 17. He's been missing since 1987.
Fox does a double-take. They give the vital stats, the height and weight of this kid at the age of two, as if that'll have any bearing on what he looks like now.
Fifteen years. Fifteen years this guy's been missing. So basically they're looking for a blond, blue-eyed seventeen-year-old who probably has no earthly idea his father kidnapped him all those years ago. Does anybody seriously think they'll find him? If he happens to get one of these cards in his mailbox and recognize his own age-progressed face on it, will he call the number and say No, I'm not missing at all, and that's not my name?
This is very unhappiness-making ...
no subject