Shot in the Face

When a coworker suggested indoor paintball, I viewed the photos of the tiny field with concerns. The three or four times I'd played before had always been outside, in heavily wooded areas. When a learned a few people were going, and one offered me a ride, I decided to take a chance and try it out, despite my initial reaction to the photos. I knew playing in such close quarters, pain was to be expected. I knew the odds of being on the field more than five minutes were slim to nonexistent. I didn't know how much fun I'd have.

We arrived bright and early, just after 10 AM, at a nondescript brick building with a single sign noting that we were in the right place. The friend we were meeting wasn't there yet, delayed from missing a train after a wild night, but his friends recognized us. Before long we were ready to play, and as I donned my mask and stepped through the door from the preparation area to the “field”, my concerns returned. It looked EXACTLY like the bad photos on the internet, albeit less grainy, and the inflated “barriers” didn't look too sturdy either. It was fortunate I'd worn boots with solid treads, since the astroturf-like carpeting was soaked with paint, and treacherously slippery in places.

The one good thing was that not many people were there yet. With five in our group, we were pit against another group of five, which meant the game might last longer than it would with more people. Unfortunately, while we were a group of veterans all over the age of 30, who'd wait for clean shots behind cover, our opponents included younger children with automatic weapons and the video game mentality of “infinite ammo”. As the ref blew the whistle, a barrage of sound erupted as innumerable spheres crashed into the flimsy barriers. On my first run forward I took two to the chest that I never even saw. At close range, they really do sting more. As I walked off the field to the safety beyond the netting, I wondered how long I'd have to wait. I need not have worried. The games averaged between five and ten minutes, with very little time in between. Five hours later, even with a party coming in and playing every other round, and even taking a pizza break, we still got in about thirty games, if not more.

Probably the most painful hit I received was, in true improbable fashion, friendly fire. Walking off the field after getting hit in the second round, I felt a sharp pain erupt on the right side of my back. I winced, but kept walking, and by the time I was off the field I was seeing stars and feeling very woozy and lightheaded, Fortunately, the sensation passed, and when the round ended one of my friends apologized and offered me a free shot in an upcoming round, which I declined. His gun had gone off by accident, and I couldn't very well hold it against him. As of now, I still bear a pretty impressive golfball-sized welt.

No two matches were the same. Sometimes more people played; sometimes less. Sometimes our group would split up and mingle with other players. At times the refs moved around the barriers, which one frequent player had names for. Personally, I was shouting out “left!” or “right!” as well as the color of the barrier concealing an opposing player, but this one kid used nicknames like “dorito”, “taco”, “snake”, and “house”. I remember at one point I made a heroic run and slide to a barrier at the middle of the field, and knocked it over. I lay crouched as low as I could as deadly spheres whizzed over my head, and desperately tried to pull the thing back up so it would offer better cover.

We won some and lost some, and there were plenty of rounds in which I lasted the entire time. There were a few disputable “kills” since they had a rule that a hit on the gun counts. At one point a ref was shouting at me to get off the field. I looked at him quizzically, and he pointed at my gun where paint had erupted on the hopper. It wasn't my favorite rule. In another round toward the end, as I was getting bolder, I charged and slipped, miraculously not getting hit before I could crawl behind a barrier. Some of the players had very good aim. In one match I looked up from my position and never even saw the shot that hit me. Suddenly a paintball exploded dead-center on my visor. My limbs shot out in four different directions as the force of the impact sent me flying back to the ground a few feet away.

All in all, it was an amazing day and a different experience from the games I've played in the woods. I'll probably do this again, but not for a few months, and definitely not before my bruises heal.