Karl Kelman's Pointless Stories of Things Better Forgotten

Pointless Stories
Two Can Clifford

In high school, there was a guy on our cross country team who will call "Clifford." His last name started with a "C," but it wasn't Clifford. He gained fame one night near Horsetooth Reservior.

Several members of the cross country team had headed out there to have a few beers. We would up meandering around in the dark open space or natural park around Horsetooth. When we decided to head back to the car, we discovered that the fastest way, the road, was below us - with a drop-off of indeterminate height to a pile of loose dirt before the road (The cliff and the dirt below were shaded from the moonlight by the hill). It was so dark that we had a difficult time estimating the height of the cliff, as some contended, or not a cliff, as other contended.

We'd only had two beers each. Literally, two beers. Not the drunk guy's "I've only hash a coouple of beersh, officisher." Exactly, two beers.

As we debated whether to try jumping off or climbing down this "cliff" to get to the road faster, or walk around the long way, Clifford spontaneously jumped off. Jumped. Not lowered himself from the edge, but jumped.

Now, the distance which was so hard to estimate suddenly became clear. Clifford flew perhaps fifteen feet down through the air, bounced in the soft, steep dirt at the bottom, and was projected perhaps another fifteen or twenty feet into the middle of the road, finally settling perhaps fifty feet from us after tumbling out into the middle of the moonlit road. We all watched in horror has his rapidly shrinking form made it painfully obvious that the road was twenty to thirty vertical feet below us, and we should walk around.

Clifford seem oblivious to the fact that he could have been killed or seriously injured. He hopped to this feet, and encouraged us to jump down also, completely missing what had just happened. He'd always had a reputation as a lightweight drinker, but his complete insanity after only two beers earned him the name, "Two-Can Clifford"

Smartest Kid in Grade School

When I was in the fourth or fifth grade, I'd often play with a kid in the neighborhood we'll call Allen. Allen wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but the neighborhood I lived in didn't have a surplus of kids my age, so you hung out with the ones that were there.

One summer day, we rode our bikes out to Horsetooth Reservior. It was something to do. We parked our bikes and hiked aimlessly around the area. At some point, we discovered a sizeable cliff, maybe 50 feet high, and started dropping rocks off it for fun. They'd hit with a cloud of dust or maybe hit another rock and break it. The bottom of the cliff wasn't too far the road that ran along the east side of Horsetooth, but it didn't seem like the rocks were in any great danger of hitting a car, landing what we considered to be safe distance from the lightly traveled road. It probably wasn't the safest thing in the world, but, in our minds, we couldn't envision a rock actually hitting a car. A couple of rocks had tumbled out into the dirt road, but we temporarily stopped dropping them when an infrequent car passed by. We probably knew it was something that some safety-minded adults wouldn't have approved of, but, there weren't any around, and it seemed like we weren't hurting anyone. Besides, it was probably a half-mile or mile walk around from the road to the spot we were (the cliff blocked direct access) - we just sort assumed we wouldn't get in trouble.

After awhile, we got bored of dropping rocks off the cliff, and started talking where we were sitting by the edge of the cliff, looking out over the cliff at the reservior. We probably talked for fifteen or twenty minutes. Suddenly, we heard an adult voice behind us, and turned around to see a Colorado State Patrolman. We were both frightened. Had we hit a car? I didn't seem like we gotten anywhere near a car, but were we wrong? Obviously, this State Patrolman didn't get out of his car and walk all the way up to us for exercise.

Fortunately for us, he didn't seem angry. He started asking us about a BB gun. We told him we didn't have one. He asked us again, and we repeated our answer. Thank God, I thought. Whatever had brought him clear out there seemed to involve a BB gun, and we didn't have one. Therefore, I reasoned, we weren't in trouble.

I suddenly remembered that I had seen three kids with a BB gun at Horsetooth earlier in the day. The State Patrolman was very interested in this, but it had been hours earlier, and I'd seen them at a considerable distance. At the time I saw them, they weren't really doing anything, just walking, so they didn't seem very interesting to me or really stick in my mind. After asking me a number of questions, the Patrolman seemed to realize that I just didn't have much useful information. He told me that some kids had been shooting at things they weren't supposed to (cars or something) with a BB gun, thanked me for my help, and turned to leave.

Suddenly, my genius friend, who hadn't said much during the whole conversation with the Trooper decided to speak up. "I'm glad you were just looking for those kids," he said, "I thought that we were going to get in trouble for throwing rocks off the cliff near the road. I thought maybe we'd hit a car."

Of course, we now got a long, stern lecture on the dangers of what we'd been doing, complete with the frightening story of kids who killed some poor innocent person doing just that, and would probably spend years in reform school, their lives ruined forever.

I hated Allen. But, like I said, their weren't a surplus of kids in the neighborhood, so I hung out with him anyway.