Pittsburgh

My LA class was assigned the task of hard-boiling an egg, drawing a face on it and clothing it, putting it up for adoption and finally taking in a new egg from another peer as a foster child. When we got our new foster eggs we had to fill out a brief form asking about the egg child's name, weight, appearance, medical history and then write a story about the egg's life before it was put into foster care.

I have already turned in the paper explaining the eggs appearance and medical history so I wont be able to share that with you until I get it back. To summarize it briefly, I just mentioned that the egg had cobalt blue eyes, dark red hair, pudgy cheeks, weighed twice as much as other children his age, had diabetes, was color-blind and had a hard time breathing due to the sheer size of his body. I gave him the most powerful and independent name that I could think of, Pittsburgh.

I bring you "The Former Life of Pittsburgh:"

Disclaimer: This writing was published on this site purely to share my own writing with others in order to entertain them. I did not fail any assignment and I am not asking for any public outcry against any one. Seriously.

Pittsburgh came from a long line of fit-bodied able business tycoons. His great-grandfather started a logging business when he moved to the Cascade's after emigrating from Germany. He and his family cleared out whole forests and looked like they had bright futures ahead of themselves. Not long after the family company’s established success, they were attacked by Indians who claimed that they were logging on their ancient burial grounds.

An entire family was scalped the day that the Indians came; an entire family of hundreds of Indians. This kind of bloodthirsty rage was what drove the family to financial success and led to Pittsburgh's eventual fate.

When Pittsburgh was born to his father he weighed a hefty 12 pounds and 7 ounces. His father thought nothing of his rather large weight other than just assuming that Pittsburgh would grow into a big strong young man. He was proud of his new son.
With all of the physical capability that Pittsburgh's father saw inside his son they quickly formed a quite strong relationship. He hoped that Pittsburgh would be a great help logging and eventually take over the business himself.

Pittsburgh ate more and more as each day went on. When he was only a month old doctors had declared him morbidly obese. His father started to question his child's future and put him in an eating program to help control his weight.

During Pittsburgh's first session to control his eating problem, he fainted. He was rushed to the hospital and admitted to the emergency room. During all of the frenzy in the emergency room a doctor took Pittsburgh's prominent father aside and explained to him that Pittsburgh had diabetes.

Pittsburgh's dad stayed calm and saw his sons newly revealed condition as just another small obstacle to work around like the many others that he had encountered in his business world. He even started treating Pittsburgh this way. He no longer saw him as the potential that he could be, but instead saw him as a problem that needed to be solved and fixed. As his father lost sight of Pittsburgh's future, Pittsburgh himself lost sight of everything good and beautiful in life, more specifically, he lost his sight of color. No one noticed his loss of sight.

After almost a full year of being disappointed and looking down on his son, Pittsburgh's father decided to put aside all that he knew was wrong with Pittsburgh and planned to turn a new leaf with him. To celebrate his newfound unselfishness and Pittsburgh's new chance at a future he bought Pittsburgh his own set of color-coordinated saws. He took Pittsburgh out to the forest to teach him how to cut down trees and follow in the family's business footsteps.

Out in the forest Pittsburgh's showed Pittsburgh his new saw set and taught him how to use them. Pittsburgh's father told Pittsburgh that the red saw was for sawing through the thick bark on the outside of the tree, the blue saw was for cutting through the rest of the trunk of the tree and that the green saw was used to cut off the branches on the tree after it has fallen down. Then he asked Pittsburgh to pick up the red saw and to cut through the bark of a nearby tree.

Pittsburgh had no idea which saw was red. He looked from left to right at each saw and then at his father. Then he cried.

Pittsburgh's father finally learned one of Pittsburgh's last secrets. He couldn't believe that Pittsburgh could be color-blind. All that he could do was stare at his son as he cried helplessly on the forest floor. As each tear rolled down Pittsburgh's cheeks his father only saw a wasted life flow away drip by drip. Pittsburgh's tears fell off his face to the ground below. Within each tear that Pittsburgh shed, his father saw his own reflection for just a split second before it struck the ground and shattered. It was as if everything that came from his son was worthless and that all he had ever seen in his son was only a reflection of himself that he had projected on to Pittsburgh and could never stay without him there to provide the reflection.

After Pittsburgh's father realized that he had always only been looking for himself within Pittsburgh he was able to stop seeing him as he wanted him to be and was able to see him how he really was. He was a child without arms or legs. Literally.

How long has he been without arms and legs? It doesn't matter. No matter how long Pittsburgh had been in such a condition it didn't stop the ol' family bloodthirsty scalping genes from kicking in. Pittsburgh's father scalped the entire family with a shotgun. He came back to Pittsburgh in the forest and gave him the shotgun telling Pittsburgh to turn it on himself to put him out of his misery. Pittsburgh couldn't kill his own father willfully or even physically. Pittsburgh's dad was forced to accept this final failure and take his own life thinking that Pittsburgh really was completely useless and that he would bring the family name and company to amount to nothing.

Pittsburgh was brought into a foster care home a few weeks after the incident and then into my own house when he was 18 months old. Whenever I am with him he seems to be a normal happy kid, but, sometimes, at night, when I am completely quiet, I hear him gasping for breath and eating Twinkies by the box.

Oh, I just remembered, here's a fun fact: Pittsburgh got cracked today and the injury turned out to be fatal. He is no longer with me.

His death means that I have to write up a story to Child Protection Services basically explaining why his death wasn't my fault. I can't wait!

- Steve