“Hahaha – TAG! You’re it!” Johnny turned and ran.
Charlie wheeled to chase his friend but almost fell over the metal piece lying on the plaza.
“Whoa!!” he cried. “Johnny look at this!”
He picked up the long cylindrical piece he had stumbled over. It was heavy, rounded and finished at one end, rough at the other. The rough end had clearly fit into something.
“What is it?” asked Johnny. “It looks like an antique joystick.”
“You are absolutely daft,” Charlie said. “First, it’s too big. Second, it’s too heavy. Third, it’s metal and everyone knows that joysticks are made of plastic and have buttons on them.”
“I said it was an antique,” Johnny replied defensively.
“I think it’s a belaying pin,” Charlie said. “I saw them when my dad took us to a ship museum.”
Johnny looked puzzled. “I’ve never heard of a belaying pin.”
“When pirates were trying to climb on board a ship, these things were in the railing and the sailors could pull them out to whack the pirates on the head,” Charlie said, attempting to demonstrate. The proportions were wrong and the piece too heavy. “Maybe not,” he said.
Charlie rarely admitted that he might be wrong. Johnny beamed.
They both threw out ideas for what it might be.
“Part of a fancy fence?”
“Something that fell off an old piece of furniture?”
Just then, a man approached them. “You found it!” he said.
He took the piece from the boys and walked quickly away.
This is my submission for the Unicorn Challenge. It’s a simple challenge: No more than 250 words and use the photo as a prompt.
I have no idea what that picture shows. Can someone tell me what that is?
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 
If you’d known what it was, you wouldn’t have come up with such an amusing tale! It’s an uprooted bollard by the way!
Grear story 💜🥂🥂
a few twists of the knob and he was on his way back to his home planet.
I actually thought about a little green man coming to do just that!!!
A belaying pin! I love that concept, Sally! Great, fun read. (I didn’t know what this damn thing was either!)
Very interesting story.
Ha, mystery prolonged – ‘Who is that ( not) masked man?’
I love your stories that have conversations between boys, Sally, I always see and hear them.
And thanks for the new word – I’d never heard of a ‘belaying pin’.
I showed that picture to multiple people to ask them what it was. Nobody seemed to know, but one man thought possibly it was a belaying pin. I had to look up what that even was.
I’m surprised at how no one recognises this.
C’est une borne or, as Keith says, a bollard, used for traffic control.
Fun story.
Hey!! Hey! come back here… ain’t right to walk away without providing an authoritative description of the thing! ain’t right!
lol fun story
Well, by golly, I guess we’ll just never know! Nice write!
Sir? Excuse me, sir? Found WHAT? Mister, wait! Found what???
a bollard, of course
People who know what it is recognize it immediately. Then there are the rest of us.