It’s easy to judge people based on their hobbies or interests. I am get a mixture of curiosity and pity when somebody explains their passion: model ship making, pet grooming, the fiddle. I just can’t imagine how someone arrives at a hobby as quaint as making corn husk dolls. You don’t decide to do that one day; a hobby like that is thrown before you and you become enamored by folding dry corn husks in the shapes of little people. How can anyone feel cool when they shape corn silk in the shape of a head of hair?

I prefer hobbies that have guts. Welding. Mountain biking. Backpacking. I shouldn’t say welding because I’ve only played with it, but I like people who do weld. My other hobbies are tame but at least have mystique: painting, traveling, and reading.

I’ve always judged people who like to play paintball because they are the closest remind me of the rednecks I grew up with. Just a bunch of dimwitted males choosing games to exert pain on one another. But I take all of that judgment back and say that I was totally wrong. Paintball kicks ass.

Josh’s friend organized a day of paintball, and I decided to join the clan as a chaperone. Once we had loaded guns, a face mask, and a camo jacket, we joined a horde of junior high boys and marched towards the first game for beginners. We split into two groups, and spread out into what looked like a war-ravaged village. There were small wooden structures to hide in, bunkers, trees, bushes, rocks, the hillside. The referee yelled to begin the game, and a paintball exploded on my hand within three seconds. I didn’t even have a chance to put my finger on the trigger and I was already shot. What the hell?

As the day went on and I got more experience aiming my warped gun, I was to last longer and actually have some fun. It was hysterical to play army with these kids because they were all too eager to be the dominant male. They would bark orders at me and use stupid lingo: “There’s a sniper on the hill! I said bunker down! Load up at push!” I don’t even think they knew what they were talking about. But as long as someone else with a fancier gun said it, it was worth repeating with confidence. There were other grownups in the game who were obviously not beginners. They wore head-to-toe Desert Storm uniforms and carried some serious guns. They’d storm through a course and take out twenty seventh graders in ten minutes. I don’t know where these guys came from or why they played with this group, but looking back, I think I’m just jealous because they were so good.

My best performance was the last game in a hilly field covered with trees and overgrown bushes. All day I’d been pelted by herds of 20 kids hiding in a bunker. It’s easy to hide and just unleash bullets. But it was more fun for me to run from one place to the next, diving behind barrels and jumping over walls. And that’s where I got nailed.

But finally, there was no safe place. Everyone was on their own in the woods. I crawled through ditches and then finally nestled down in some brush and nailed a few unsuspecting dorks cutting through the trees. But after a few minutes the bad guys caught onto my game and unleashed about 100 paintballs into my bush. It felt like I was being squirt with a garden hose from twenty feet away. Except it was a rainbow of paint.

The most amusing theme of the day was the safety freaks. At any moment, one dork was yelling at another dork about their blunders in safety. Masks on! You are in shooting range! Sheath your weapon soldier! This went on for hours. You’d hear some commotion and expect a school yard pushing match, but alas it was only a concern for another’s safety.