In The Town Where I Grew Up, There Was A Large Statue In One Of The Parks, Of A Famous Historical White

In the town where I grew up, there was a large statue in one of the parks, of a famous historical white colonizer. I'm not going to say who specifically, suffice it to say that it was someone who wasn't worth memorializing for their deeds. And as you can imagine, this statue was a frequent target of vandalism, with paint or toilet paper or eggs on multiple occasions. Now, the local council was generally pretty lax when it came to repairing potholes or other public damage in the town, but every time, 24 hours after this particular statue was hit, the same person would always appear in a Hi-Vis vest, hat, mask and sunglasses, carrying a bucket of water, and wash it clean. They would do it as quickly as possible, but always made sure the face and the name carved at the bottom were generously scrubbed. This only encouraged people to do it again, and so it became a vicious cycle.

Within a year, the statue had sustained so much damage that it was unrecognizable and the lettering unreadable, so eventually the council came and took it down. Also apparently, the person in the Hi-Vis vest didn't even work for the council. They were supposedly just some 'good samaritan' who cleaned it, often before the council even discovered it needed cleaning, so they just let them do it and ignored the problem. They didn't bother putting the statue up again.

Much later, we found out that the anonymous 'samaritan' had been deliberately washing the statue with a bucket of saltwater, which had dramatically corroded it, causing irreversible accumulative damage far worse than spray paint ever would have done. It's even theorized that they were also often the one spray-painting it, just so that they had an excuse to come back after a day to wash it.

Tuulikki Pietilä (Finnish, 1917-2009)

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Artist : oru

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