Typically, unless a young white girl goes missing in the news we won't hear stories behind the multitudes of people who are categorized as "missing person." People disappear every day, sometimes by their own choosing, and it can be enlightening to know the reasons why.
Reddit user, u/BrianThePinkShark, wanted to hear a story not often told when they asked:
Redditors who were a "missing person" what's your story?
A Nap To Forever Change Your Life
In 2nd grade, I fell asleep on the school bus ride home and missed my stop. My mom always waited at my stop to meet me, and freaked out when I didn't get off the bus. The bus driver looked back, and since I was lying down fast asleep, he didn't see me. An hour later, I woke up at a random school bus terminal on the outskirts of town, and my mom had phoned half the town freaking out.
Funny story to tell now, but my poor mother was convinced I had been kidnapped for a solid two hours, it really took a lot out of her.
Shopping For Safety
My parents stopped talking to each other since I was 5 but they still lived together.
One day, my father took me (9F at the time) to go shopping with him. We came back to find all the neighbourhood looking for me and screaming my name, well...my mother was relieved but my parents had their 1245543th fight again.
This could have been avoided with one phone call.
I wish they could just divorce.
"For some reason they didn't think my bear story was as cool as I did."
When I was young, probably about 6 I think, my family went on vacation to Yosemite. We stayed in a small cabin at a campground. I met another kid who was a bit older than me, and we went exploring. Apparently we went a bit too far, and eventually ran into a bear cub. We just stood and stared at each other for a few minutes and went our separate ways. When I got back to the cabin, I found out that park rangers had been out looking for me because my parents had no idea where I was.
For some reason they didn't think my bear story was as cool as I did.
It's Just 10 Digits
Was never reported but my dad once forgot me at a café in the mid 90s during a time when local police was looking for this guy. Because everyone was paranoid at the time, my mom had made me learn my full name, my adress, our phone number and my parents' work phone numbers by heart and so when people realized that I was alone they were able to call my mom at work. Shortly after my dad showed up absolutely horrified. He had forgotten that he'd taken me with him.
Make your kids learn your phone number by heart.
Always Leave A Note
It was my first day in kindergarten, I was supposed to go to the after school day care but I lost the note saying I was supposed to. So the teacher shoved me on the the bus and told the bus driver where I lived ( not sure if that's actually how it went down but regardless they made me leave) The bus drops little 5 year old me off at home. All the doors are locked and my mother wouldn't even get out of work for another 2-3 hours. So I do what any little kid does I sit on my front porch and cry.
Luckily I lived right across the street from the high school and this angel of a woman sees me from the the bleachers while a soccer game was going on. She comes over to check on me and stays with me the entire time.
Mean while at the school the staff is going crazy because im no where to be found, my mother was called and as im told, crying profusely. Then out of the blue I see this 1960s brown Cadillac pull up and over walks my principal he thanks the women for taking care of me and brings me back to the school.
Okay, Kids Need To Really Reconsider Their Nap Situation
My sister once had the entire neighborhood, the police department, and God knows who else out looking for her. It turns out, she had crawled behind the sofa, and fell asleep on top of an air conditioning vent for about 5 hours. My mom went inside as the sun started to go down, and sat down on the couch to cry. My sister then crawled out from behind the couch, and started petting her on the head asking her what was wrong
When Death Is More Preferable Company Than Home...
My mother was on the phone with the police after I fell asleep in a cemetery for 7 hours after school?
I had a sh-t homelife, so I'd be anywhere and everywhere I could be to not go home. Beginning of the school year was still really nice outside, so I decided to hit the Dunkin Donuts near my house, grab some coffee, and I walked to the cemetery that was maybe 10 minutes walk from my house.
There was a really nice mausoleum in the cemetery, which happened to be the structure at the highest point in the city, so you can, on a clear day, see about 15 miles. I chilled there for a while, just kinda thinking. About 300 feet away is a statue of Jesus on the cross, with other figures. I was kinda tired so I laid a little ways away from it, just enough to get some shade, not enough to be laying on it, and I listened to music until I passed out. Woke up a few hours later, figured "f-ck it, might as well go home" and my mother started losing her sh-t. "He just walked in, I'm so sorry- WHERE THE F-CK WERE YOU????"
I left and went back to the cemetery
Mother, Dearest
I was kidnapped by my biological mother and missing for 3 months when I was a year old. My bio-mother has a horrendous crystal meth habit, took me during a court-mandated visitation and kept me in her various users/sellers houses.
When I was found, I hadn't been changed in days, I was in damp clothing and I had been given cough syrup daily to keep quiet. She was arrested and eventually released.
The Longest Year Of Your Life
Not me, but my brother was missing for around a year. He'd disappeared before, but only for a few days --he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and would often get delusional--but this time he didn't turn up. We live in NYC and my parents had no idea where to look for him. They'd regularly go to the police station and look at pictures of bodies that had turned up. He didn't have any friends or girlfriends we could ask about him. He had just vanished.
A year later we got a call from a hospital in DC. My brother had been picked up on the street, nearly dead from malnutrition. He'd gone to Washington to warn the government about something or other. He often refused to eat, believing his food was poison, and lived on the streets for a year. The only reason he survived was because other homeless people took care of him and convinced him to occasionally eat something.
He was a skeleton when they found him, full of flea bites. Eventually my parents nursed him back to health. He's still mentally ill but hasn't tried to disappear again. I think about him whenever I see a homeless person.