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This weekend we played some paintball, which admittedly isn't a very culturally relevant thing to do but it can be if you pretend that the other team is a horde of North Korean communists come to rape your paycheck. Once you get past the awkward sensitivities of screaming, "Here come the filthy yellows over the ridge!" it's a lot of fun. I was on the Green team, you see.

The shebang was arranged by Adventure Korea, a group of lucre renegades who make a good living off Westerner ex-pats and generally offer very satisfactory services. This time, however, said services lay at the end of a three-hour subway, bus and walking marathon so we were all feeling a bit unsaucy as we finally wobbled over a suspension bridge and into the Woodlands of Paintable Combat. Way up past the northwest end of Seoul, you would think that simulated warfare might be a bit closer to home for these battletorn Korean folk (meaning: closer to my home). But once we clasped firepower in our clammy hands, all was forgiven in a rush of adrenaline and threats of forthcoming headshots.

My experiences with paintball have been regrettably limited in the past, but I played a shitload of Team Fortress as a kid so I figured that would translate into combat expertise. Imagine my surprise when I sallied forth on our first round of conflict and faced the harsh realities of painted war. After scrubbing around the bushes with Dave and Chad in an area nowhere near the focal point of attack, playing at being commandos, I decided to take my invincible self to the front. I rushed the ridge fearlessly and... POP ... took one right in the forehead. I was dead without firing a single shot. OMG WTF sniperz!!!

I walked down with my gun held high in pitiful surrender to the waiting area, a morose valhalla of the slain, and toweled myself off. Next time I would be ready!

The next round was capture the flag and here was where I was sure my Team Fortress experience would pay off. Capping flags was kind of what I did, those early high school years, y'know? I was lame, but I could concussion-grenade jump like a champ. So the whistle blew, I charged valiantly for cover behind a stack of logs... and got shot in the knee. Fuck!

Crestfallen, I walked the shame path back down to soldier's heaven, the first casualty in what would prove to be a route of my team. I sucked, but at least my hopper was stacked with unfired ammo. Maybe I could excel as an ammo-boy, a wheelbarrow supply chain who props up the real soldiers until he is accidentally killed when a colonel's parrot steps on the hammerlock of a pistol and blows the poor bastard's kidneys out. Yeah, that sounds like the ticket to me.

Fortunately, the next game proved to be a bit more fruitful. Overflowing with killing marbles, I trained my gun at enemy foxholes and spammed the everliving shit out of them until they rose, defeated, covered in yellow death. I killed and killed and killed with mindless attrition. I also managed to put my hand in a thorn bush, but a palm full of needles is a small price to pay for not getting shot (for once). And I was happy in my slaughter.

Then the Adventure Korea portion of the adventure was over, but we were invited to purchase additional ammunition at the modest price of 7 000 won per 100 paintballs to continue slaying each other. Ahhh... and herein lay the rip. Needless to say, we hadn't traveled three hours to not shoot paintballs, so eager buys were made and the fray was met once more.

One of our boys had bought four canisters of paintballs and he became the mortar, firing wildly into the air as fast as he could reload. Meanwhile I found myself a little too bloodthirsty for my resources and had to go on suicide runs along the ridge to get the most out of my sparse remaining ammo. For some reason, everyone loved shooting me in the knuckle, so I had to clean off my gun a lot.

Finally, my moment of glory came when I went on a flag run in my last game, five paintballs left in the hopper and nothing to lose. I stumbled out of cover and down into the hollow where a red flag hung on a branch, a deadly fruit for any comer. The air turned into popcorn and I found myself the target of an entire army. Hoping to pull the flag at least five paces back towards my team before I was eviscerated, I was mindblown to find that I was clambering my way back up the hill with the prize and nobody had shot me yet. Oh, they had tried, they had emptied the barrels of destruction in my direction, but through the will of some trickster god of unconventional physics, I remained unscathed!

So I got to be a pseudo-war hero for five minutes until the next game started, and that's more than I possibly expected, not being a Winner by nature. If I was a natural Winner, I wouldn't have needed to tell you about getting the flag, am I right? I would've just said "Yo we played paintball and I was characteristically awesome." But really, how fun is that? I'm used to laughing off my losses, but I kind of appreciate my history of failures because they let me boast like a dick on those rare occasions when the boat floats my way. Wheeeee!

Posted by Chris at 10:36 AM >> Commentations (1)