It doesn't matter how good of friends you are with people, in the end, everyone wants to shoot their friends. Thank goodness for paintballing. There is a paintball course in West Kelowna so this past weekend, I went with a group of friends. Half of us had gone before, the other half of us were newbies to the sport. Initially it was supposed to be girls versus boys but when we saw the final group was two girls and five guys, we decided maybe that wasn't such a good idea.
I was so stoked to go because I had never gone before and I just wanted to shoot people. For the most part, we all got the same equipment so everyone would be on the same page: coveralls, face mask and basic gun. But look at how many equipment choices there were. Paintball is a serious sport.
When we all geared up, we either looked like janitors (because some of the coveralls had names like "Matt" or "Steve") or exterminators (because of the face masks). There was a quick orientation about how use the guns (the paintballs looked like yellow Maltesers to me, and apparently they're organic/all-natural and can be eaten but trust me, they don't taste good) and then a brief overview of the course (the first course we went through was set up like a big trench on one side where one group defended and on the other side, scattered trenches and fences that the other group weaved through to attack the first) and then it was game on!
I've never been in a war before (obviously) but I would imagine it's really similar to paintballing. We all took it pretty seriously (since we all wanted to shoot one another) and we were determined to be awesome at it. Defending was stressful because we couldn't see the other group and there were paintballs flying out of nowhere. I felt like my paintballs were just being wasted because I couldn't tell if I was hitting anything. We split up our defending and each took sections of the trench to cover and it was stressful knowing that I had to take care of one section all by myself.
Being on the attack was even MORE stressful because I had to dart around to different fences to get closer to the defending trench while still trying to take my friends out. I couldn't help but have flashes of LOTR battle scenes as I was maneuvering through the course. At one point, my friend was like "Cover me Julia, I'm going in" so we counted it down and then I stood up and blasted away while he darted out front. We did this a couple times and a) it's an adrenaline rush and b) it's effective.
We did one course and then did a course called "urban sniper", which, even just the name itself, is awesome. The second one was way cooler since there were more small buildings to hide behind and the course was more complicated. I kinda felt like a member of a special attack squad that was trying to take the other team down to save someone. Yes I dramatized the whole thing in my head.
Now I had heard paintballing hurts but I heard it was like a quick slap and then it would go away. Incorrect my friend! I got pelted twice in the face mask, which was actually kinda cool since the yellow paint exploded on my mask and it looked pretty legit, once in the shoulder and once in the upper leg. The pain, it stays! It's like how I would assume a bullet feels and then it welts up and if you're like me, bruises all around.
The day after, I was sore all over because of all the crouching and darting around. And my bruise was wicked gross. But the pain was worth it to shoot people.
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