My very first experience with paintball was when I was a junior in High school growing up in Indiana. I remember my brothers would take off with these guns and goggles and head off into the woods, only to emerge hours later covered in paint and sweat. I didn't really know what they were up to and the amount of paint and bruises squashed any sort of curiosity I had. The first time I saw one of the guns shot was when my one brother was threatening our youngest brother in the driveway and ended up shooting him in the foot, spraying orange paint everywhere. Now, whenever I see orange paint I hear that howl of pain and Joey's laughter ramshacking through my mind.
It may or may not be known that Mr P. is an avid paintballer. This year his big Christmas present from me was a pair of cleats I spent four months investigating to make sure they were the brand to have for your average enthusiast. Needless to say, I've been his favorite person ever since.
I'm a sports person. I LOVE to play sports, there's very few I won't play...actually two. Baseball and Softball. My top favorites are as follows: volleyball, wallyball, lacrosse, basketball, soccer, badminton, football (sometimes), racquetball and street hockey. Coincidently, playing street hockey is how I met Mr. P in the first place.
Soooo being the good wife that I am, I decided to give playing paintball a try. We like going down to a place in Salt Lake City called Paintball Addicts. P only plays speedball so that's what I began trying. We would go down with a couple of his work buddies or sometimes just he and I go and play.
The first couple times playing was thrilling but pretty scary. I enjoyed the idea of the game but knowing any second you could get hit was a little unnerving. I ended up getting hit in the mouth a couple times and while I was wearing my mask, the shells of the ball still go through the vents therefore making contact your skin. For those of you wondering out there, paintball paint taste like a blend of vegetable oil and roadkill grease.
Something I pride myself on is my high pain tolerance. My coach for wallyball forced me to purchase a pair of knee pads because she was sick of seeing my knees all banged up and bloodied. However most of the sports injuries are usually self inflicted, ie: diving on wood floors in racquetball courts, or you see it coming. Such as the time during my championship Lacrosse game a girl kept checking me on my fingers until one almost broke. Boy I'll tell ya, I'm not a foul language kind of person whatsoever but that was the first and only time I used a swear word. Unfortunately, it was also at a church school so I got a talking to by the ref for that one. Whoops! Anyway, like I was saying I think it's the fact that these balls come out of nowhere (that's what she said) and it sort of traumatized me to the point where when we went to play last night, and the ref yelled go and I froze. I realized that the only thing I could think of was getting hit in the mouth again.
So the moral of the story is we will be leaving the paintballin' to Mr P. and I'll just focus on taking the pictures. But nobody can say I didn't try!
