Have you ever had an idea, only for someone else to come along and make some kind of success of it before you got round to actually doing something about it?
A couple of years ago I came up with an idea. I thought it was clever and funny, but I never really did anything about it at the time. More recently I’ve been writing scripts for a comic version of my story and one novelised version. And I’ve been doing some rough character sketches for the comic version. I figured that if I didn’t start doing something about it, someone else would pop up and steel my proverbial thunder.
The story I came up with centres on a young boy, a boy that seemingly has nothing. He has no parents, no friends, no real personal belongings. He lives with an elderly relative who really doesn’t know how to look after a child and so the boys days aren’t exactly the best of times.
But the boy had something going for him. He had spirit, he had guts. And he had the uncanny ability to spot where things had gone wrong. The boy spent his days watching documentaries about the emergency services and news channels about the latest disasters to strike the city. Then he would spend his nights running across rooftops and down streets, chasing police cars, ambulances and fire trucks. He would study the emergency services and their tactics for handling all major incidents, learning how best to deal with bank robberies, car crashes and apartment fires.
My story started with the boy witnessing a fire in an apartment block, a fire that kills a family the fire service sadly cannot save. After the fire is eventually put out the boy gets to talk to the fire chief, pointing out what they missed and coming up with a plan that would have actually saved the family.
Hindsight Boy was born.
I figured that with a bit of work I could have a half decent story on my hands, something a little different. But today I received a text that put paid to my idea.
“There’s a new character in South Park called Captain Hindsight!”
Oh, balls.
It gets better.
“Yea, apparently he turns up at a fire in an apartment block and tells everyone of the safety protocols they should have observed. He then leaves 6 people to burn.”
Oh, double balls.
If only I’d copyrighted my idea.
Hindsight, eh?
Oh the irony.
