In the Line of Fire

Oh man. A week ago I found out that my entire office was taking a trip to Boise, Idaho for a company retreat of sorts. We recently went through a merger and were going to get together with all the other offices and have dinner and social time, stay at a hotel, and then have a meeting in the morning and do a team-building activity. I pictured holding hands with my LDS co-workers preparing to catch a blind-folded person falling backwards and then sitting in a circle using feeling words while sucking down Dr. Pepper. I shuddered. And then I was torn from my reverie to hear the words "paint" and "ball". Together. In one word. As in, we were going to go paintballing. This, my friends, is the height of team-building innovation.

This paintballing experience involved wearing full camouflage gear, a camo balaclava, and running shoes. The course was in this huge, dim, warehouse with a sticky, sandy floor and old cars, and plywood walls with crude windows cut into them. They divided us into teams, told us to stand in opposite corners, and then set off a bullhorn. This was just like war. Rapid fire, screams, bullets whizzing towards you. I was one the last to survive only because I crouched, squealing, behind a large barricade until everyone else had shot each other in fits of heroism and aggression. We then broke into smaller groups and went to the outdoor courses. One of the courses consisted only of tires which are not that tall, the result being I eventually was shot directly in the forehead. This totally hurt and to make matters worse, I was never hit anywhere but my forehead. Which means I was hit in the forehead many, many times. This may indicate to an experienced paintballer that I did too much crouching and peeking from behind things, but it seemed a lot more logical to do this than move around. The one time I did I was shot by my own teammates.

I'm not sure how therapeutic the whole thing was. Today I have three welts on the top of my head and my arm aches from toting that gun around. The overseers of the paintball company commented that this was the most aggressive group of adults they had ever seen.