Paintballing: It hurts SO good

Friday was our company paintballing activity. I had never been and, when asking my new co workers how I should prepare, their only response was "Wear lots of layers."

On Thursday night, when learning that I had never been, two of my new co workers widened their eyes and said "You are going to be SO sore all weekend." My response: "Really? Sore from WHAT? I work out all the time [lies!] so I'll be fine." They just laughed at me. Silly, silly new HR Manager girl!

Now a full 48 hours after the fact, I can barely get up and down my stairs without wincing. This is unfortunate because my humble abode is in fact two floors. Getting up and down off the toilet is also very painful and pathetic.

The problem? It's two fold: Crouching and Squatting.

Now, unless you're Jason Varitek or some other major league catcher, you don't often find yourself crouching OR squatting for extended periods of time. And if you are perchance doing either of these actions, it it very rarely for minutes on end.

For those of you who have never played paintball, getting hit by one of those little fuckers HURTS. I don't care how tough you are or pretend to be, because I'm pretty god damn tough. I had three layers on top and one on bottom. In hindsight, this was no where near enough. In order to avoid getting nailed by a paintball, you spend most of your time either running while also crouched over, or just squatting behind some sort of barrier to avoid the hail of little plastic balls filled with water based paint.

A fair number of the guys have their own equipment and play frequently. Two of them brought specialty rapid fire guns. One of the those guys was on my team, although he did nail me at one point in friendly fire. To his credit, he didn't know it was me. The other guy was Big Red. And since I very much believe in karma, I wasn't so shocked to hear that Big Red sprained his ankle during his last game (he then had to leave early). Everyone together now! AWWWW.

We played five games. In the last game, I was hit so hard (IN THE BACK!!) that I started to cry and had to leave the game. I felt like the BIGGEST asshole, but felt much better after I learned I was the third person to leave the game BUT the first lady. ha HA!

I think I gained a certain level of respect with some of the guys. At least I hope I did. Even if not, it was the most fun involving extreme (for me) physical activity that I've had like, ever.