Boy with his finger in the dyke (2009)

I thought it was about time that the well known story by Mary Dodge of the little boy, Hans Brinker, who saved the town by putting his finger in the dyke was updated to the modern day so here goes:

It was a lovely autumn afternoon as Hans Brinker headed off to take fresh cakes that his mother had baked to his blind friend Jansen. Jansen loved visits from Hans, not many people visited the old man these days, with the fear of pedophiles rife old men living on their own, even blind ones, were considered too much of a risk to let children near.

On his way home Hans was walking by the dyke when he heard the sound of running water, that's funny he thought where is that coming from. He look around and found a small hole in the dyke with water spraying out. All children in Holland know how important it is to keep the water out of the town so Hans grabbed his mobile and phoned the police, who in turn contacted the council who then contacted the sub-contractor who sent an email back to the town council.

The following morning the town council opened the email and referred it to the department dealing with dykes who said that it was not a gender issue so forwarded it to the engineers.
This was major, they knew a hole in the dyke was serious so they called in a number of professors who together with super computers began to produce mathematical models of how the hole might look after 1 day, 1 month, 1 year and 10 years.

The professors presented their findings to the people of the town by a series of leaked emails to the press saying how the hole in the dyke could mean the town would be flooded in less than a year and explaining in detail how in the worst case the entire country could be flooded.

The professors were given a grant, began touring the area giving presentations, making videos such as "an inconvenient leak" and building a new dyke change institute.

Meanwhile the day after finding the hole Hans Brinke had told his father who being a builder had mixed up some cement and filled the hole. The professors knew nothing about this and continued to work with their computers predicting, forecasting and scaring people until one afternoon a professor was out for a walk when he noticed Hans standing with a friend and pointing at the dyke, "look" he heard him say, "that's where my dad filled the hole I found".

The professor pondered then headed back to his office and began another run of his model.

So who is the statue at the top, that's Hans a statue was erected to him in 1950 to please the tourists who thought the story was true and expected to see something about it.