The Prompt - Lazy

Leroy Antony Zimmerman hated his nickname. Not the fact of having a nickname, everyone had a nickname. Pamela was called Twigs because she was so skinny; Lenny was called Leo because someone's Dad had said' Hey, Lenny, like the lion'; Sid was called Rollo after he stuffed one up his nose and spent an afternoon in Casualty having it removed. But Leroy Antony Zimmerman really hated being called Lazy.

Everyone thought it was so funny to shout 'Oi, Lazy, slow down!' or 'Oi, Lazy, we can't keep up' or 'Oi, look at Lazy bombing about'. For Leroy it had stopped being funny about 10 minutes after they'd given him the nickname. He begged them to give him another nickname, anything would do but they were adamant that Lazy was the one for him. He tried to say or do something which would make them give him a new nickname; he spent a whole day walking backwards so they would call him Reverso; he painted his face so they would call him Clown; he walked on tiptoes all day so they would call him Tiny but nothing worked. They just laughed at his antics and carried on calling him Lazy.

As they grew up some nicknames changed. Sid grew to over 6 foot so he was called Tiny; Pamela filled out into a glamorous young woman and lost her nickname altogether. But still Leroy was called Lazy. He managed to lose the hated nickname when he went to university but as soon as he returned home the calls of 'Hey, Lazy!' started up again. What had seemed irritating to him and amusing to them when they were small was now a source of real annoyance to Leroy. No amount of pleading, ignoring or raging made any difference. He was Lazy to them and that was all there was to it.

One quiet afternoon when Leroy was sitting alone in his mother's kitchen when his email alert pinged. He opened an email titled 'Slackers Unite' with no idea what a slacker was or why they should unite. The email invited him to join an online community of slackers - people dedicated to laziness and doing as little as possible - slacking. It had started in America like most things but, according to the email, had spread across the globe. In every country men, and it was mostly men, embraced the slacker lifestyle and stopped trying, gave up, dropped out. They stopped going to work, socialising, doing anything much except browsing the internet and reaching out to fellow slackers and sharing slacking tips.

Leroy was intrigued. These slackers seemed to be having a fine time by not engaging with the modern world. And they seemed really happy. They weren't doing what they were expected to do and they sounded free and liberated. All the things that Leroy had longed for and never found. He read on, then Googled them, then found their home page and signed up. Leroy Antony Zimmerman became a slacker.

And the first thing he did was to embrace his nickname and sign himself up as Lazy.