Autumn Air

Colin is a 21 year old kid. He thinks he’s an adult, but his dad still tells him he’s a kid. His dad’s name is Art. Art’s name fits him well - he’s a painter. Art thinks he’s wise, but Colin think’s that Art’s just old. Colin doesn’t think that people are any smarter just because they lived for longer. So, he hates it when his dad calls him a kid.

After all, Colin reasons, the legal age in Ohio - where Colin and Art live - is 18. Colin would pull out his driver’s license and show his dad that he was, according to the state of Ohio, an adult.

Art would wave his hands, and say that just because his driver’s license was now horizontal, that didn’t make him an adult. The conversation would usually end there.

Colin had enrolled at the University of Cincinnati and was studying computer science there. The idea of what new discoveries in computer science could do to change the world excites Colin, and he hopes someday he will be able to add something to the world himself.

Today is the first day of autumn. Colin can smell the change of season in the air, and loves it. That smell always brings back pleasant memories of his childhood, and he wonders why. It always seems to happen every year. The smell of the air - the happy memories. Colin wonders why this couldn’t happen with all the seasons.

He steps out of his apartment, and takes his first steps on the gray concrete towards his University. It takes Colin about 20 minutes or so to walk to class, and he usually enjoys these walks, but since today is the first day of autumn and there is that smell in the air, today’s special.

Colin doesn’t put in his earbuds and listen to music. He just listens to the sounds of life around him. Anyone being honest would call Cincinnati an ugly city, but today all that Colin could see is beauty. He sees beauty in that very specific shade of blue that the sky is on a clear day like today. He sees beauty in the couple that walks past him, pushing their baby along, chatting about something or another. He even sees beauty in the noisy sound of cars whooshing past him, as their drivers hurry off to some place. On this day, in every sound and every footstep, Colin felt peace.

BRRRRRIIIIIING - BRRRRRIIIIIING. BRRRRRIIIIIING - BRRRRRIIIIIING.

That is, until his phone brought him crashing back down. Colin nearly jumps from the ringing. He pulls it out of his pocket, and the phone says that Art is calling.

Colin answers the phone, and says hello. His dad hesitates, and makes an awkward noise as a greeting. There’s a pause. Colin listens and waits. After a long moment, Art begins to tell his son how he has been thinking a lot about his son’s life. He says that he needs to do something about it. He says he feels a responsibility to do something about it.

Colin asks his dad what he means.

After a moment, Art says much louder than he meant to, “You’re throwing your life away!”

Colin stops walking. He stands in the shade of a tree, by a graveyard. Colin thinks of all the lives ‘thrown away’ there, under the dirt. He waits for his father to speak again.

Art tells him that he just doesn’t believe in this computer science stuff. He says this type of work will not lead to a happy life. He says that humans need to express themselves, that they need to create. Arts says that arranging your whole life around these computers will turn you into one. Art says that Colin is just chasing the future, and that doing that won’t lead to happiness.

“Well, you’re just chasing the past!” Colin shouted back. “And the past is dead!,” Colin added as he looked again at the graveyard in front of him.

Art doesn’t tell his son to calm down. In fact, you could say he did quite the opposite.

Art continues talking. He tells his son that he cannot help his son go down the path that he is on. He says that it was his mistake to let him go down it in the first place. He says he should never have let him sign up for a computer science degree in the first place.

Colin stops breathing, because he suddenly knows what is about to happen. His whole body freezes up in anxiety.

“I can no longer in good conscience pay for you to attend that school,” Art says.

Art says that Colin is an adult, and he can make his own decisions, but that Art won’t help him go down a path that he thinks will lead to unhappiness for his son.

Colin tells his father that this is a strange - and very convenient - time for him to finally call his son “an adult.” Art ignores the comment. He continues telling him that he can get student loans to pay for his computer science degree, or he can switch his studies to something “that gives life meaning,” and he would continue to pay for his education.

Colin had gotten the message. He asks if that was all, and Art confirms that it was. Colin tells his father that he’s got to be going to class then, and hangs up the phone.

Anyone being honest would call Cincinnati an ugly city, and now all Colin could do was agree.

Colin can’t pay attention to the data structures lecture going on in front of him. You’d think he’d be wondering how he was going to pay for his education, but all his mind can think of is one simple hypothetical question: if he had a son, could he possibly do to him what his dad just did to him now?

He tries to be honest with himself. He knows he’s not the best person in the world, but even still, Colin can’t imagine himself ever doing this to his son - if he ever were to have one. No, he tells himself, he’d let his son make whatever mistakes he wanted. It’s his life, after all.

That’s the way Colin feels: his life, his choice.

But, beyond that, was there even any truth to what his dad was talking about? Colin thinks - no, surely not. He’d met plenty of people who weren’t professional artists that seemed quite happy. He’d met plenty of people that didn’t make any art at all that seemed quite happy, in fact.

The more Colin thought, the more sure he became that his dad was totally and completely wrong. Colin thinks of how he’s not just screwing over his own son, but he’s doing it for bad reasons!

In that hour of class, Colin had learned absolutely nothing about data structures, but he’d learned a whole lot about life.

Art the artist. His mother had made an Art who makes art. That was the bad joke that he’d heard too many times when she was still alive. Art had always hated the idea that his name was responsible for sending him down an artistic life path, and that it wasn’t himself that made the decision.

Today, this was on his mind. “I should have named him Photo or Film or Book or something just as stupid,” Art was thinking to himself - “It’s not like I named him ‘computer!’” He tells himself that he should have named him “Click Clack,” because that’s all he’s going to be doing now. Colin’s going to sit in a little office chair, in front of a disgusting screen, clicking and clacking away for the rest of his life.

Colin had phoned him back and told him that he would be continuing his computer science degree, and he would get loans from the bank to do so. Colin had also been quite critical about Art’s decision. He told him that he would never do that to his son, and that Art’s decision was a betrayal. Colin also mentioned something about a “perfectly happy garbage man” that he knew who’d never done an artistic thing in his entire life.

Art was surprised at Colin’s conviction. He had never expected him to do anything but drop out of school and follow his advice. But, on the phone call he didn’t hesitate, he didn’t negotiate. He just told him no, he refused, and that he thought Art was completely in the wrong. And that was it.

The simple way in which Colin said it all was what upset Art the most. He felt empty, because he could sense that this was goodbye. Colin no longer needed him for money, and he thought he was a bad father. What more reason could he need to ever speak to him again?

Art sat in front of a canvas in his studio. He had a paintbrush in his hand. The canvas remained white and blank for a minute. Then, the canvas remained white and blank for 10. Then, the canvas remained blank and white for an hour.

All the art that Art could see was his son, and didn’t have the courage to paint him.

After Colin said no to his father’s demand that he change his career, his sense of self became clear. He now owed a bank $25,000 for his final year of University, but he knew who he was. He had always known in his head, but it felt totally different to act it out in real life. He was an adult, and now there was no one to tell him otherwise.

It’s now a few months later, and Colin is continuing his classes at the University of Cincinnati, and is doing better than he ever was before. He finds it easier to make friends than he did before. Colin - the computer programmer - even finds dating to be pretty easy now.

Before long, the school year has come to an end, and Colin is attending his graduation ceremony with his friends, Sam, Lucas, and Sarah. They are having a great time celebrating this moment. The day is bright - as bright as the mood of all the overjoyed students, and all of their proud parents watching. Colin is chatting with Sam, Lucas, and Sarah - smiling and laughing - when Sarah tells them that she should probably go over and talk to her parents. Sam and Lucas remember this, and say that they’d better do the same. So, Colin is left standing in the middle of all this excitement, all alone, looking out at where his father might have been seated.

With his excellent grades, Colin managed to get a job all the way across the country in the world capital of the computer science world: Silicon Valley in California.

His job is great. It’s a startup with young programmers like him, so the work environment is relaxed, and the pay is terrific.

The work excites him. He sees the future in his work, just like he dreamed he would when he was a teenager. He feels like he and his coworkers have a chance to bring the world one step closer to the future all of us have desired.

Colin works and works. Starting a business is tough work, but in the tech world, it’s even tougher. Bringing the future to today requires many late-night coding sessions. Often, there’s not enough hours in the day for Colin and his coworkers to complete their work.

One night at 3:30am, Colin is coding on a project, and he remembers a day back in Ohio, when he was around 12-years-old. It was one of the first days of autumn - that special time of year when you can smell the season changing, and it brings back happy memories. On this day, Colin and his dad, Art, were trying to sweep all the leaves in the yard. But, it was a very windy day, and everytime they collected a pile of leaves, the wind would replace it with another moments later. After an hour, the yard looked exactly the same as it did when they had started.

This frustrated Colin - he just wanted to get the chore over with so he could go play video games. But, when he looked over at Art, he had a big smile on his face. Colin didn’t understand this at all, so he asked his dad what was so funny about this, didn’t he want to get this chore done and over with?

“Over with?,” Art asked. “This is life. If we skip these parts, we’ll skip the whole thing.”

The next day Colin goes to his boss, and quits his job. He tells him that no matter how much work he did, it never felt like he completed anything. He tells him that there is always more and more coding, and that he wants to find something where he feels like has completed something.

Programming pays well - and Colin never had any time to spend money anyway - so he has enough money to live on until he finds the next thing.

He walks around town, thinking about everything. After a while, he sees an old movie palace - a cinema - and is charmed by it. They never had movie theaters like this in Ohio, where Colin grew up. This was California, the movie capital of the world, after all.

Colin is feeling delighted. With Sandra, he has just finished editing his film - and it’s done! It’s finished. It’s just a movie, but to Colin, it feels like the Great Pyramids of Egypt or an Angkorian temple - something that will stand for a thousand years.

Colin hears screaming from the other room, and rushes over to see what it is. He sees Sandra holding a letter. “It says we’ve been accepted!,” she shouts in excitement.

They had submitted their film to a film festival, and the letter said that their film would be shown at it. For a new filmmaker like Colin, this was the best thing you could ever hope for.

After the film ends, Colin surprises his co-filmmakers. They expected him to come celebrate with them. But, Colin instead goes to find his father. It wasn’t difficult. The crowd around him had left, and he stayed exactly where he was, clearly afraid he’d lose his son a second time.

The two exchange words, and eventually Art tells him there’s something he’d like to show him. They get into his car, and Art takes him to an art gallery nearby.

Colin is surprised. He asks his dad if he moved to California? He says that he did. Art also says that after they stopped talking, he read more into computer science, and even learned some coding himself. He said he eventually found beauty in coding - in how it was both extremely simple and extremely complex at the same time.

When Art turned on the lights to his art gallery, Colin was very surprised at what he found. A whole series of paintings of nothing but computer programming languages.