Next year will be my 25th in Colorado, and I’m grateful for everything this glorious state has given me. Still, one thing has always bugged me: I’ll never be able to earn one of those groovy green bumper stickers with the simple boast: Colorado Native.
If I can’t go Native, I can at least strive for Semi-. But with so many transplants living in the state — more than half of all Coloradans moved here from someplace else — we can’t be willy- nilly about granting Semi-Official Semi-Native Status to just anyone. Requirements must be met.
You can start calling yourself a Colorado Semi-Native if you:
• Ever survived a kid’s birthday party at Casa Bonita.
• Wake up earlier on weekends than workdays.
• Have visited the Coors brewery, but only for the short tour.
• Bought something at the Stock Show that you never used.
• Paid more for your bike than car.
• Can tell at least a half-dozen Texan jokes. (Extra credit: Threw a tomato at a Texan in Twin Lakes.)
• Ate enough unlimited shrimp at The Broker to ruin your appetite for steak.
• Made out as a teenager on Lookout Mountain, or, as an alleged adult, joined the Two Mile High Club.
• Spent three hours driving three miles on I-70.
• Paid a toll on the Boulder Turnpike.
• Skipped a fare on light rail.
• Climbed a lamp post on Halloween at the Pearl Street Mall.
• Climbed all 54 fourteeners.
• Shot a five-point bull or a six-point buck.
• Spotted all three species of rosy finches.
• Stripped off your shirt in the south stands.
• Left your bra on the ceiling of the Little Bear.
• Shoveled your roof.
• Bought fudge in Estes Park, ornaments at Santa’s North Pole, or elk jerky at any roadside turnoff higher than 8,000 feet. Extra credit for outdrawing Black Bart at the Royal Gorge.
• Run in the park with a lab or golden retriever.
• Drove a Jeep Cherokee in the ’80s, a Ford Explorer in the ’90s, and a Subaru anything during this decade. (If you still drive a Hummer in Douglas County, wouldn’t you really be happier if you moved back home to Orange County?)
• Skied on any of the following: Black Heads; PRE 1200; Rossignol 4S; Salomon X Scream; Asolo Snowfields; or any Atomics over 210 cm. Extra points for brown-bagging it at Loveland, beaching it at A Basin, or learning to snowplow it at Winter Park.
• Rooted against Kent Denver or Cherry Creek in high school sports.
• Got soaked in Skull, Snaggletooth, or Seidel’s Suck Hole.
• Remember when Scott McInnis had brown hair, then blonde hair, and then brown again. No fair answering if you’re his harried hairdresser.
• Swilled bourbon at the Strater.
• Fished with a Scott rod, Ross reel, and RS-2 fly.
• Heard bugling at Rocky Mountain National Park when there were more elk than people.
• Saw U2’s Under a Blood Red Sky at Red Rocks. Alternate credit for seeing at least two Grateful Dead shows at Red Rocks in two different decades. Extra credit if you still remember them.
• Have an REI number of less than 1 million.
• Can answer — or at least explain — the following: Who has a duty to die? What city has never been No. 1 in anything but carbon monoxide levels? Who killed JonBenet?
• Think Aspen is less of a place and more of a state of mind.
• Considered life in Colorado Springs after the Rapture.
Mark Obmascik’s latest book, “Halfway to Heaven” (Free Press, May 2009), won the 2009 National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Literature.
