Tagging

This afternoon I walked down the hill to post an item I had sold on TradeMe and I noticed the doors to my front garage had been tagged (graffiti for those Americans reading this). I don’t know why they call it tagging in this country. If someone can explain that to me, please do.

Anyway, it was disappointing to see as I live far away from the centre of town in the start of the rural area of Tuakau. There is no footpath in front of my property and there are only a handful of houses around here. The only way for someone to be in the front of my garage is if they had stopped in a car.

As I walked down the hill, about 2.5 km, to the centre of town I noticed I was not the only one that had been tagged. There was little spray paint signatures dotted here and there. There was no real pattern to what had been tagged. Some fences went unscathed while the "for sale" signs in front of one property were completely defaced.

I don’t understand why boys do this. I know I am jumping to a conclusion assuming it was boys, but you don’t usually see groups (or should I call them gangs) of girls loitering around like they are up to no good.

Graffiti is just plain destructive. I don’t see what the culprit gets out of the action. You can’t even understand what is written. Is it sloppy handwriting or just some sort of code? Maybe it is simply misspelling, which I would equate to the lack of education these hoodlums must have. They certainly haven’t learned to respect other people’s property.

Fortunately it is an old garage – the original single-garage that was built with the house in the 1950s. I use it for storage of firewood and some garden tools as it isn’t very secure. So I am not too upset as the doors are old and shabby. But I didn’t want to give these brats free advertising so when I returned home I got out the turpentine and wiped the silver paint away. I was surprised at how easy it was to clean up and that the original brown paint of the doors was intact.

I know it is the school holidays and lots of children are at home unsupervised, but I would think they could find something better to do with their time than deface property. And what are children doing out after dark, not to mention where do they get the money to waste on spray paint? In this country spray paint can only be sold to people 18 years or older, which would imply that older kids are doing this or getting the paint for the younger ones. Now if I were a store owner and a teenager came in to buy spray paint I would give them the 3rd degree. What are you buying this for? I would act curious as to what project the kid was working on and hopefully arouse enough guilt in them to prevent the sale.

A couple years ago during the Christmas school holidays I noticed that two of the 10 solar garden lights I had lining my driveway were missing. I called the police and they simply said lots of kids are causing trouble at night because of the school holidays. They didn’t even bother to take my name or address. That night the other 8 lights went missing. This meant the thieves had to walk the entire length of my driveway along the side of my house to steal them. If the police had bothered to drive by they may have caught the kids.

I didn’t feel very safe after that, so a week later I had an electrician install sensor security lights at the front and side of my house. Of course there was nothing left for the little buggers to steal, but I didn’t like the idea that someone was walking around my property at night. On the good side, the lights are a good security to me when I arrive home after dark. However the garage doors that got tagged are out of the range of the light’s sensor.

I just hope the boys ran out of spray paint and don’t return. It could be much more trouble and expense for me it they tag something else!