MY RED BADGES OF COURAGE

WARNING! THIS POST CONTAINS SEMI-GRAPHIC MALE NUDITY. LEAVE NOW IF YOU WANT... DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU. 

Paint-balling. An extreme sport that causes a lot of bruises. But its great fun and I finally went this weekend with Paul, Matt and Tom thanks to a generous contribution from the local women's circle.

For the uninitiated like I was, what is this all about? 10-20 minute games where you try to raise a flag or pretend its the Alamo without getting shot... but if you do, you can come back into the game after touching base and get shot some more. Getting shot isn't overly painful, but it hurts enough that you don't want to get hammered by 20 consecutive hits either; so you truly want to take cover and treat it like a "real" gun fight.

Too bad us 4 aging married guys had to get stuck on a team with 20+ people, most of them in high school and no balls to charge up to the front. At the start, we were stoked because we had two guys that looked like they just walked out of a Soldier of Fortune catalog, but they were complete wimps and never got into the fray. Apparently tons of $$$ and gear does not make you a better combatant. We had one tool for a teammate that managed to shoot Matt and Tom. Outside of that, there were two girls that actually had some guts. The rest just hung around the base. I don't get it. You paid money to shoot people and get shot. I guess I now know why armies have leaders that give orders and flog soldiers that don't follow them... cuz it would suck to have your life in their hands. The other team had some sweet guns and knew exactly what they were doing. We got our A$&!'s handed to us. But enough chit chat. You came to see how nasty I got. So here is the aftermath.

Got hit in the arms several times. Leaves a nice gelatinous glob of gook on you. NOT PAINT. What's worse is when you get shot in the mouth. The mask stops the ball from splitting your lip, but you do get stung and the stuff tastes awful. Spent a few minutes spitting it out while returning fire. 

Leave it to me to get shot 2x in the left boob and then have to walk about like I've been lactating. 

There were more welts, but I don't' think you want to see where they landed... 

The Gator was a bit upset about his dad getting shot. "Why'd you do that???"

I should add that Paul got a NASTY welt on his neck. After seeing what happened to him and me, I suggest every dude wear a cup when paint balling. Until next time.