supper at the best table: the boy afraid of the weights
Stice had had a traumatic psychic experience at fourteen when he’d set the weight on the pull-down station too high, and Dr. Dolores Rusk has authorized his exemption from all but very basic weights, pending resolution of his fear of weights. The joke around E.T.A. is that Stice, who’s surely Show-bound after graduation, has no fear of heights, but does fear weights.
Context
The Stice thread's other body-fact, and it rhymes with the pull-down-station debt Lyle keeps on him (084): at fourteen Stice loaded the pull-down "too high," and the fright has hardened into a clinical exemption "from all but very basic weights, pending resolution of his fear of weights." The divinely-gifted, Show-bound body has a phobia lodged right in the middle of the weight-room economy where every other body pays its dues. "No fear of heights, but does fear weights" — the instrument comes with a flaw the regimen has to route around.