Paintball Memories
The other night, not being able to fall asleep, I turn on the TV in search of a late night baseball game. It was late so I knew my chances of finding a baseball game were pretty slim. That’s when I stumbled on the US Paintball Championships on ESPN2. Yes, that’s right paintball! Never in a million years would I have tuned into a sport where people run around trying to shoot other people with little balls filled with paint. It’s not so much the sport itself, it’s just that the way they "twiddle" their fingers to fire the gun faster that makes it look pretty stupid.
As a kid, I was a big fan of playing war. We had "the gully" right behind my house which was a wooded area great for wartime simulation. We would setup forts, booby traps, and have the time of our lives pretending to kill each other all day long. You would figure that paintball would be right up my ally. Yeah… not so much.
One day while over a close friend’s house, we were playing some war games in his backyard. We were dressed up in full camouflage and running around with our toy guns killing every imaginary "bad guy" we could find. All of a sudden my friend shrieks in pain and drops to the ground. I look and there is an orange spot on his back. He yells for me to get down. I have no idea what is going on and all of a sudden I’m a little scared. He yells, "It’s my dad, he’s in the window, get down!!". I look up at the second story window where my friend’s dad is poised with his paintball gun tracking my every movement. I’m only 10 and have never even seen a paintball gun before but from the sound that my friend made on the way down I figure out pretty quick that it’s gonna hurt. So, screaming like a little girl, I started running around the back yard jumping and flailing about like a krazy person. He misses his first two shots, I imagine because of how hard he was laughing at how I was acting. The third shot is right on and hits me in the upper thigh. I fall to the ground in pain thinking, "Real war sucks!" What I should have been thinking is, "What kind of dad shoots his kid and his kid’s friend with a freakin’ paintball gun. I’m gonna sue this bastard for everything he is worth." Needless to say my taste for paintball ended at an early age.
While paintball surely isn’t my thing, I did find watching it slightly addicting. Funny thing is that you can find the current standings and schedule on the official National Professional Paintball League, but there is no information on ESPN whatsoever. I guess they are too busy keeping up with "real" sports like poker.
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