Spindles

Enjoy this short story by Mace Styx.

When Tim one day made the mistake of wearing shorts at school, revealing how sticklike and sickly thin his legs were, one of the many vitriolic idiots referred to them as ‘spindle’ legs. The comparison wasn’t entirely accurate, but somehow the word had a particular connotation of legs that were twig thin, willowy and bone like. For whatever reason, the name stuck and for the next four years Tim was referred to by the majority of the school population as ‘Spindles’. While Tim hated this moniker it was preferable to the more obviously pejorative terms like ‘cripple’ that sometimes reared their ugly heads and certainly better than ‘six limbs’, which one imaginative pupil had christened him on account of his having arms, legs, and crutches.

So often and with such little shame was this ‘nickname’ used, that it became common even for those not wishing to hurt his feelings to use it as if it were his birth name. When he received certificates in classes at the end of each year, some of his teachers, not recognizing that the name was a cruel label rather than an affectionate pet name. Actually used it on the document, presenting the award for best essay or highest test score not to Tim Overton but to ‘Spindles’. Tim had not even left the school grounds before he had torn them to shreds.

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