The most fun you can have while acquiring welts
This past weekend, I joined up with 20-plus other men for a game of "shoot the crap out of your friends with paintball guns in Vallejo for 6 hours." I had never fired a gun before, and I was a little nervous about the getting-hit-by-projectiles aspect of the game, but my trepidation quickly gave way to good times.
The first thing I noticed when I rolled up on
Paintball Jungle (their motto: "NO POISON OAK") was that I was either amongst people who were far too into it, that I was going to get shot up like a can on an Arkansas fence, or some combination of the two. I had on a long-sleeve gray shirt, a black t-shirt, a green cap and blue Adidas sweatpants with white racing stripes down the side. Nearly everyone else at the facility was in head-to-toe camouflage gear, backpacks equipped with multiple CO2 tanks and shiny, expensive-looking guns.
Luckily, none of those people were in my group. But I quickly learned that the racing stripes on my pants were going to make me an easy target.
We rented our equipment, tested our guns (projectile speed = 250 mph), split into two teams and headed into the forest. Once we started playing, the adrenaline took over. I was a little trigger-happy and ran out of ammo quickly, but a downed player on my team hooked me up with a refill. I got hit in the (begoggled) right eye about 3 minutes into the first game, which was actually pretty neat-o because I got to see the paintball bearing down on me before everything turned yellow. For a few seconds, I contemplated what the remainder of my head would have looked like if it was a real bullet, got goosebumps and then got ready for round two.
I ran out of ammo quickly again in game two, but hit two players on the other team in doing so. My first kills. Moments later, I was a lame duck, crouching behind a wall with no ammo and jumping up periodically to fire a few blanks at the other team. Tactics, see: I hoped it would bring them out of the cover for my teammates to shoot, but the opposition was onto my tricks. I got blasted above the left kneecap, which means I would now have one leg and a freakish face if I had survived the first shot in a real war.
I survived round three, but my role was basically to provide cover fire while the rest of my team infiltrated a fort.
In game four, my team had to defend the fort while the other team tried to infiltrate and kill us all. My color-blindness took over at this point -- I couldn't see any of them and just fired blindly at any spot noise was coming from. This gave my position away and led to the first bleeder of the day. A guy on the other team had a good shot at me while he charged in from the left and hit me on the left elbow and bare right hand from about 8 feet away. The paintballs exploded, and so did my hand. It stung and bled but got me all fired up. In the real world, I would now have no face, no left leg, no left arm and no right hand (and there's also a possibility that the point-blank shot that hit me in the left elbow would have tore right through my arm and into my rib cage had it been a real bullet).
I changed my guns-blazing strategy for the next two games, which were both Capture-the-Flag matches. My new technique was to move stealthily and refrain from firing until I could surprise somebody. It was effective, but I almost shot a teammate. Our team won handily, and I was a part of the 3-man force that pushed ahead and grabbed the flag. We celebrated and hollered like we had actually captured secret microfilm or some shit. Our team was finally beginning to "jell".
Then the next round took care of my right knee. I was now a headless stump. Miraculously, my torso was still unscathed. I took shots to the left and right kneecaps in the next couple of games, a testament to the visibility of my sweatpant racing stripes.
The last game took place in the thick jungle (or as close to it as you're gonna get in Vallejo). I had my best offensive performance of the day (three kills, plus an assist). I went out like a sucka, shot from about 15 feet away from the side while I was looking forward. The hits left nice, ever-expanding baseball-sized welts below my left shoulder blade. My torso was now gone.
I was no longer a virtual stump. I was just bits and pieces scattered throughout the forest, providing meat-eating forest vermin with a delicious meal.
Surprise of the day: None of the hits (except the bare-skin hand shot) hurt as much as my leg muscles over the past three days. Running around for 6 hours in a crouched position takes its toll on your quads.
Respect of the day: Infantry soldiers.
