Paintball Just Isn't My Thing

Do you remember when the Island King and the Boys went paintballing a while back?

I was their combat photographer and even though I was scared it would hurt if I got hit I decided I might want to try actually playing one day.

The Island King, his brother and two of their friends decided to go play on Sunday.

And of course the Boys wanted to go too.

They asked me if I wanted to go and after giving it some thought I decided that "yes" I wanted to try it at least once.

It did look like fun.

Sunday rolled around and I put on extra layers of clothes and off I went - ready to play with the boys.

I was still a little scared but the truth is that while I was scared of it hurting when I got hit I was more scared that it would hurt really bad and I would cry.

I'm a girl like that.

It would be horribly embarrassing to cry in front of any of the people at the paintball field and obviously I didn't want that to happen.

The Island King told me not to worry because there were other girls there last time so obviously girls play.

I explained to him that the people we saw last time were anatomically female but they aren't really classified in the "girl" department.

Which means I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't cry if they got hurt.

There were about 30 people there so we divided up into two teams.

Which sent me back to middle school because the team captains got to pick and since they didn't know any of us they picked all of their friends first and we were all just standing there like the kids who suck at Dodgeball.

The captain who picked me (not last, thank God) was giant. He had to have been 6'5 and was built like a linebacker.

I decided immediately that I was going to hang with him.

The game we were going to play was Take the Flag. Two teams, one flag in the middle of the woods. Whichever team grabs the flag first has to bring it back to the opposing team's bunker, kill everyone and have control of the flag and bunker.

I told the captain that I'd never done this before and he told me to stay with him. We were going to guard the bunker so when the other team came at us we could protect the bunker.

Ok.

He tells me they will come at us from the left and the right. He'll guard the left and I'm to guard the right.

I think I can do this.

Except he kneels down and tells me to do the same so no one can see us.

He's at least a foot taller than I am so when he kneeled down he could still see over the top of the bunker.

I could not.

So I had to squat - which caused my knees and legs to start burning almost immediately.

We can hear the paintball fire coming closer and he tells me to get ready.

I got into a spot where I could see anyone coming at us from the right side and was ready to fire.

Suddenly, three blasts of fire went through my back.

Someone had snuck around behind us and shot me and the captain both in the backs as we were looking the other direction.

Let me say that while the pain wasn't so bad it made me cry it did HURT LIKE HELL!!!
The captain and I were both out of the game and I was thinking maybe this wasn't something I wanted to do all day.

But I decided to try one more game.

I was doing pretty good, guarding a POW when a man came out of the woods next to me.

I shot him three times in the chest but he shot me in the face.

The ref was standing there and according to him we were both out.

Luckily, this guy shot me in the face - where my mask was - and I didn't feel a thing.

By this time the boys are all having a blast but I've decided that paintball just isn't for me.

And because I wasn't sure how the day would go I had pre-loaded a list of geocaches into my GPS so I told the boys to have fun and that I'd be back to pick them up later.

I found the caches I was looking for and realized that I'm a geocacher not a paintballer.

I had a great day and so did the boys. From now on when they want to go play paintball I'm packing my cache bag and going caching.

Paintball looked fun but this girl just didn't like it.

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