A t-shirt sits in my closet that brings back a certain for me.
Its a gray Nike shirt with a faded pink stain in the center of the chest. I always wear this same shirt every time I play paintball even though its too small. Its my good luck shirt. I can remember when this same old shirt was relatively new. .
It was a hot humid morning when a few friends and myself drove into the parking lot of my favorite paintball field. We unpacked the car and found an unoccupied picnic table under the pavilion. We registered ourselves and suited up. I put on my camouflaged jumpsuit over my shorts and unstained gray t-shirt.
The referees rounded all the players up and put us on teams, all of us were blue. The first game was in a field the shape of a banana with a dogleg on one side and a dry creek bed as deep enough to provide good cover. I grouped up with two of my friends at our teams flag station and waited for the refs whistle. We waited for a minute in anxious silence, then the whistle blew we sprinted to the creek bed.
The creek bed is about halfway across the field so we werent sure if the other team would get there first so we were all wary. Then we saw the creek bed. It was empty, for now. Five reds were almost as close to the bed as we were. They saw us and ducked for cover, we slid into the creek bed.
I popped my safety in to the fire position and popped off about 20 shots into the group of reds, my teammates did the same. Four of the reds shouted, HIT!!! and walked off the field. One of my friends was hit in the clash and walked off the field. That left just two of us in the creek bed. We decided that we should go over the top and make a charge on the last red in front of us, we did and my friend got him.
We charged down the sideline to get to the other teams flag. We made it about 50 yards before we saw anyone else, when we did it was all newbees and little kids (a newbee is a person who is still new to paintball, you can tell them apart by their rental equipment and lack of skill). We snuck behind the group and started giving them splotches, but then one of them had an automatic!! My friend got hit as I dove behind a barrel. As I lay behind the barrel I kept hearing the Pling! Pling! of paintballs hitting my cover. When I heard the reds calm down a little I decided that I was hopelessly outnumbered and had no chance.
After taking this in to account I decided that I should make a charge at them. First I looked up and saw that they were mostly paying attention to the other side of the field. Then I jumped up and shot at them as fast as I could, I think I hit a few of them but that was the least of my concerns. About five of them turned and shot at me, including the one with the automatic. I was hit about 7 times all over my body; one paintball hit me in the zipper where it was slightly open and got all over my gray t-shirt staining it to this day.
Whenever I see the stain on my paintball t-shirt it makes me think of that game and that great charge!!Words/ Pages : 629 / 24
