Paintball Vol. 1 - History & an Absence of Camo

Alright, I'm gonna educate those of you who are unitiated. It has somehow gotten so that my only hobby is paintball, which represents significant cutbacks in hobby breadth from my hobby heyday in high school where i actually played sports and shit. What can I say, I'm out of shape. Anyway, I play a lot of paintball. Not pinball, not ping-pong. Ok, some pinball. But mostly, paintball.

I've been wanting to try paintball since sometime in the early 90's, but my parents never let me. My mom has since commented that knowing what they know now they wish they had let me. I might actually be good or something, instead of just acceptably decent. Its just as well, I suppose, since I probably wouldve gotten hit and cried and quit anyway. But I digress. Been playing since 2001, been playing nearly weekly for a little over a year. Yes it is expensive, yes I am completely broke, no I'm still not that good.

A quick note of history: Paintball began ~25 yrs ago in the woods, a bunch of friends stalking eachother and playing guns. In the past few years it has come almost entirely out of the woods and onto a sort of concept field known as 'speedball,' where the bunkers are all man-made and even on both sides of the field, and the field is generally small enough that you can shoot the opposing team off the break and the games take no more than 5 minutes.

For whatever reason, I am fucking terrible at woodsball. I started in the woods, everybody starts in the woods, and you go out for the first time with your friends because you want to play guns and see how you would do or whatever. Its nerdy, but I've accepted it. I should also point out that once you've gone a couple times, the camoflauge/military-look-alike thing gets old, and you end up being glad its becoming a sport in its own right. I am confident that in a real military event I would suck just as bad having never played paintball. None of the regulars at my field wear camo except as a joke or to be retro, nobody thinks they're a sniper, nobody calls the paint" bullets," "ammo," "rounds," nobody calls the paintguns "weapons," there is not a single tree or shrub at said field, and there is no rule that if you get shot in the leg you just hop around on one leg but keep playing, although I'm not saying that last one wouldn't be funny. My point is, we're trying to distance ourselves from militia types here.

PAINTBALL =/= MILITIA TYPES. well for some people it does, but I think they were probably militia types before they found paintball, and they really need to leave me alone.