Paintball and Hitting the Dateless Wall

Event Date: Saturday April 30, 2011

My friend decided that for her birthday she wanted to gather a bunch of her nearest and dearest to battle it out on the paintball court. I accepted the invite because I believe everyone should have what they want for their birthday, and it was an activity in the adventurous territory that I have never tried. All I knew about paintball was that the impact of the balls that are being shot at you at 30 miles an hour was very painful. I realized that it being painful was the least of my worries, once I arrived at the location NYC Paintball in Queens, NY and I was handed a waiver where I literally signed away my life and the life of my younger sister who tagged along.  The form warned us that possible injury may include blindness, becoming a paraplegic, a list of maybe ten other things, and finally death.

The safety gear was basic to say the least so I went from being worried to being terrified. The staff at NYC Paintball were the most unaccommodating bunch of people I have ever met. This bothered me because this was an establishment that hosts not only paintball enthusiasts, or thrill seekers (like we were pretending to be), but kids parties. They were these passive but mostly aggressive men who didn’t do anything but scream at you to keep your mask on while you are being pelted mercilessly with paintballs because your gun is jammed and they refuse to offer assistance.

Aside from the awful staff, I managed to have a good time and pulled my team together to take out the other team’s assassin, after losing the first three rounds. I also had the least casualties in terms of bruises.

I ended the day feeling accomplished not only because I was alive, but because I filled another dateless day with an activity other than lying in my bed and watching romantic comedies. Unfortunately, the two weekends before and the weekend that follwed the paintball outing, were spent wondering if it was possible to rekindle one of my broken relationships, and reading dating books “for research” in my bed while watching romantic comedies before eventually hanging out with my ex.

So I derailed a little from the plan. I have a charity 5K run coming up that I haven’t trained for at all. I have been an absentee co- captain for a team that has been meeting every Saturday morning. I shamefully missed it  because instead of looking at it as an activity to get up and out of my bed I passed to grovel instead. I got to a point where I had to admit that though I am experiencing new things, I miss the comfortability of steady plans with a steady boyfriend, and the act of trying to fill in all the alone time became just as depressing as the actual alone time.  I’ll consider it a temporary set back. This weekend I’ll be training with my run team rain or shine.