There's No Crying in Paintball...Okay, a Little Bit of Crying

But first, NINJAS!

No, not this type of ninja:

THIS type of ninja:

I have a friend here who owns a red ninja motorcycle named Delilah, and after much pleading, finally took me on a ride last last weekend.  I grew up with a best friend whose dad had two Honda Goldwings, and I remember fondly the few couple times he took me on rides.  There were just a couple differences that didn't make themselves apparent until my ninja-ride began:

1) Goldwings have a nice back and armrests for the passenger, making it nearly impossible to fall out and, on long stretches of highway, almost easy to fall asleep.

2) The Goldwing had been driven by a middle-aged man, not a 23 year-old boy.

Having only the foot pegs and my friend to hold onto, I quickly learned the safest option you have is to go with the flow - lean into turns, bend down when speeds get high, and do not let go.  On the highway my thoughts were focused on the rush of the wind and the new visual perspective the view provided, and decidedly less on the fact that any car ignoring their blind spot on the LA highway could plow into us at any moment.

Thankfully it wasn't until we were back on 45mph roads that my friend informed me we had been going 100mph!  As scary at times as it was, I would gladly go again...this time figuring out how to fasten my helmet for myself.
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Last Thursday, one of my friends had a birthday and in honor, his girlfriend planned a paintball trip. As a pretty fair-skinned individual with bruising tendencies I was a little hesitant to go, but my inner spunky short person said "Hell yeah, I can do this!"  Both sides were right.

I geared up with two layers of pants and long sleeve shirts, the outside layer being loose-fitted as suggested by the internet, some sunblock on my face, and shoes I didn't care how dirty they got.  However the layers made me sweat like no other once we got going, with the addition of the mask not being the easiest thing to breath through and the gun weighing more than I had anticipated.  I was thankful that we were largely a group of beginners (although almost all the others there were bigger gamers than I), and even the couple of people who had the most experience were on my team.

My beginning strategy was simple: do not get shot.  And so I succeeded, at least for the first 3 games and the first round of the 4th.  I largely hung in the back or up in bunkers, covering the back of my teammates.  It took a while for me to get aiming down, but by the second round of the 3rd game I got two people out! I was 2 kills for 0 being killed and feeling pretty proud of myself.

In the 4th game I got my third kill and my first time being knocked out.  The shot must have come from far away, because I barely felt a pinch on the back of my right calf, but the paint was there so I raised my hands in the universal terms for "out" and left the field.  The pain wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, so I decided to be a little more charge-and-go-for-it.  Oh foolish, foolish, Past Me.

The 5th game I was coming up a hill in the center of the playing field, creeping up slowly, expecting at any moment for someone to appear just feet from me.  All of a sudden there was one of my friends about 10 feet away.  I fired a couple shots and he jumped back down, I though out of being hit.  Turns out it was just surprise from me being there and after a chuckle, he jumped back up and head-shot me.  Head shots, at least on the front or the side weren't painful at all thanks to the helmet, so I walked back off the field with dignity, even a little bit of pride in having gotten so close to another player.

At this point, I was still in a winning ratio (3kills for 2K.O.s) so my bravery increased a bit more.  The next game I got K.O.'d about a minute in on the butt, but again from far enough away that the sting was minimal.  The second to last game which featured three rounds instead of two would make the breaking of my paintball spirit. The first round went great - I managed to stay in the entire time and get a far distance kill. I was back to  positive ratio (4kills:3K.Os)!  But then the second round I didn't get to enter the playing field as far as I liked, and halfway through there was an on and off shoot-out between me and another player.  Apparently the referee called one minute left (according to the player on the opposite team whom which I was having the shoot-out), and all of a sudden this other player rushed into the container in which I was hiding. I panicked and retreated to a spot where I would have the advantage if he came around, which he did about three seconds later.  I can't be sure who fired first or how much, all I know was five seconds later I was grabbing my leg, and for good reason:

New Rule: Do not get shot from less than 5 yards away

Turns out the paintball didn't even break, just ricocheted off my leg, so I technically could've stayed in (no splatter, don't matter), but my leg was stinging so bad from a 3-foot away shot. I surrendered immediately and bowed out (I did successfully K.O him though, so still positive).  I thought that was the worst it could get, but there was one thing I hadn't remembered: my shoulder sunburn from my hike the previous day.

I headed in for the last round of that game, and proceeded to get a nice hit on someone who hadn't even seen me.  But my shot apparently blew my cover, because as I tried to leave my hide out I got hit in the shoulder, right on my sunburn.  I cried out and grabbed my left shoulder with my left hand (since my right hand was now holding all of the weight of the gun) and thought my shooter would both see and hear that I was done.  But instead he proceeded to fire at least four more times at me, one of which hit me on the left forearm I had exposed in reacting to my first shot. I cried out again (either surrender or a stream of profanity, hard to be sure), and bent over while simultaneously trying to raise my gun as high as I could in surrender.  This must have worked because the onslaught stopped and I could walk off the field, choking up tears.

As much as it all hurt and as much as I probably had a right to cry, I HATED that I was crying.  I tried to stop as fast as I could, but my sunburnt\ continued to sting for a solid 5-10 minutes after the initial impact.  Plus I'm one of those people that if I can have a few minutes to myself, I can suck it up and get back in the game - but the second someone shows sympathy, the tears overflow.  After the initial "are you okays?" and tearful nods, I was fine as we walked back to the car (where we would meet in between games while our ref booked us another field).  But when my attacker came over to express how sorry he was for hitting me, the tears overflowed all over again.  Part of me was starting to feel so bad that he felt so bad, and the "Hell Yeah" part of me was saying "Get your shit together!"  I really want to know how to control this sympathy trigger, because I hate crying in front of others and yet others' sympathy seems to restart it in injury situations instantaneoulsy.

But I gave myself a break and accepted a distant shot the next round and surrendered the very last round.  To be fair, I hadn't gotten the best sleep and hadn't had time for breakfast, which probably didn't help my fragile nature, but I still wanted to come off as tough as everyone else and was disappointed in my battle tears.  Thankfully, no one else made a big deal of it and more importantly the birthday boy had a fantastic time.

However I will not be returning to the field until the memory of my recent excursion passes, if it ever in fact does.