They call it Paintball, or Splatball. I call it just plain stupid. For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, it's this: You drive out into the boonies, dressed like Rambo, then arm up with a compressed air pellet gun that shoots gumball-sized plastic balls with paint in them. Then you split up into teams and play Capture The Flag. The idea being, if you shoot someone with a paintball, it will, upon impact, break and stain his clothes, "killing" him. This is where it gets messy. While your team is trying to go through the woods to their camp and back with flag in tow, they are trying to do likewise. Herein lies the potential for conflict. The opposing team gathers, and right quickly I might add, that if they shoot everyone on your team, it will make their journey all that much less stressful. (And they're right.) Thus ensues the most unsavory act of war.

In the first skirmish, I did quite well, taking to the idea of "kill or be killed" like a trooper. I agreed to defend our fort from the interlopers--a plan I thought would be relatively safe, as I often confuse being brave with being really foolhardy. Unfortunately, after a quick 5 minutes of crouching behind a (no doubt naturally occurring) growth of forklift pallets, my comrade-in-arms whispered. "Go for the flag." My response was immediate as if I had practiced it in Boot Camp. "Who, me?" This guy's trying to get me killed, I thought. Dead. While this was a prospect that did not thrill me, it wasn't real life, and those weren't real bullets, so I figured what the hell. I then did my best Auddy Murphy impersonation and--rifle in hand--ran tree to tree around the left flank towards the enemies camp. Immediately, I was set upon from behind. A few well aimed shots later (by the other guys on my team) and I continued on my bloody way. Soon I noticed one of my own who was still alive, but trapped behind a tree by enemy forces. Instantly, I crawled into action. (It's amazing the things you will walk in to avoid even a fictitious death.) Raining down a deadly hail of paintballs, I took out one guy and then occupied the other, who shortly exposed his posterior to my comrade who promptly popped it. Victory would soon be ours, we thought silently. He grabbed the flag and asked me, "How fast can you run?" I replied "Pretty darn fast!" So we ran. Back through the woods. Without warning, a shot rang out and the guy with the flag fell. I dove behind a tree and returned fire. One shot hooked around the tree and caught him in the leg. He protested wildly, but the referee ruled it was good, and he was dead. Now, I thought, it's just me. I scooped up the flag near where my fallen pal had dropped it and headed for the camp. As I ran, his words "How fast can you run?" echoed in my head. Abruptly, however, it was joined by paint. Four feet from the fort, the last remaining member of those commie scumbags lie in wait and (with an incredibly lucky), pointblank head shot, split my lip and filled my mouth with nontoxic blue paint. I don't remember much after that, what with being dead and all. But they told me later that the other team had won. This was the beginning of an unfortunate trend. In fact our side (the good guys), only won once. We later found out that the other team was composed of mostly regulars, and that our team was mostly boneheads who thought alcohol would be involved more.