I'm going to out and admit it - I often consider quitting paintball. Some Sundays you can't take three steps without getting lit up, and you drive two hours home wondering what the hell you're doing with your time and money. Some days the only other people at the field are there for a dorm trip or to test their battle skills or some bullshit, plus one kid who thinks he's hot shit and spends all day screaming and overshooting the new guys. Some days only three guys can make it and you can't do shit, but you got up at 5:30 and came out here to sit in a parking lot. Sometimes it's when you have to pay the credit card bill you racked up for air fare, hotel, rental car, and paint and suddenly you're staying in every night until the first comes around. Sometimes your friends from the rest of life wonder why you keep doing this, after you pass yet again on another soccer league with a bunch of guys you love, or skip out on a friend's wedding because the team needs you to fly out to East Bumfuck and put some paint on some people just so. And some days, you watch a couple games from the stands and go "what the fuck is this that we're doing here?"
If you're playing to impress people, you're going to be disappointed. You learn that talking about paintball is about as good at parties as describing the chain of events that led to you switching fabric softeners. 95% of the time you end up on the wrong end of some raised eyebrows that say "seriously?", or some jackass tries to tell you about how hard his gun can shoot and how his cousin used to have this angel.
But then Wednesday rolls around and you can't wait for Sunday so you can show up and do your thing and blast some people. Thursday afternoon your roommate catches you pretending to snap-shoot behind the couch, and you have to try and play it off like you were stretching. One weekend you go play by yourself and suddenly these guys you spend your Sundays with don't have your back, and there's no way in hell you're going to trust that kid wearing the camo to get your tape so you can do your thing, and absolutely zero chance people are going to shift and lock the zones back down when the snake side starts to drop. Field layouts for the next tournament are released and automatically half your work day is up in smoke. And when it's you who spots the gap and takes the other team apart, you wonder how you could ever give this up.
Recent quotables from the field:
"It's 9:00, where the fuck is everybody? And why can't I feel my fingers?"
"That's the rage."
"I'm seriously going to cry the day we decide not to be a team anymore."
"Left nipple's hot!"
"Some guy with a chest protector on bunkered me."
(chest protectors are the Smirnoff Ice of paintball. Unless you have boobs, in which case protect away.)
"Who else gets to do what we get to do? We travel around the country shooting people. We get to do something we love. When are we going to be able to do this again?"
apologies to Matty Marshall, who said it better than I did.
