The Thrill of Victory

That’s my nephew—he’s Pesky Tim and Missy’s boy. His birthday was this weekend, so the ten of us loaded up and drove to an undisclosed location.

Then we got out of our vehicles and walked into a nondescript building.

Then we strapped on protective vests and face masks…

And were each handed large bags of curious colorful balls.

Because we were there…to do this.

I should back up and say that Tim and Missy invited us on this expedition. Truth be told, it was entirely Tim’s idea. He wanted to “get” the girls and me, he’d said via text message Saturday morning before we all left. He wanted to show us who was boss.

“Be afraid. Be very afraid,” one message read.

“You’d better bring extra padding,” another message read.

“Bring it on, girlie girls,” read another.

Needless to say, by the time we arrived at our destination, my competitive blood was boiling.

I won’t take you through the entire three-hour ordeal because I’d get way too excited and you’d get way too bored. But the gist of it is, the paintball course is in the woods and we started out allowing the two littlest kids to pick teams. I wasn’t the last one picked, which was a major psychological victory. The teams were mixed, girls and boys, and I had never played paintball before. I was wearing very thin, faded jeans and platform sandals, and when I received the first hit on my leg in the first round of play, my first thought was to find my mommy as quickly as possible. The pain was intense, and it shocked me. I told Marlboro Man I was going back to the clubhouse to cry and practice target shooting, and he told me I’d better not try to walk off the course because I’d get killed if I did.

I wasn’t entirely sure if he meant it literally or not.

The team I was on was comprised of me, Marlboro Man, my little pixie of a niece, my younger daughter, and our baby. Suffice to say, we lost handily twice in a row. I received welts and bruises to my ego, my psyche, and my legs and ribcage…and I was sweating and hot and ready to quit.

But then we changed things a bit. During the break after the first two rounds, Missy suggested something. “Hey, how ’bout we do girls against guys?”

A thundering laughter erupted from the general direction of Marlboro Man and Tim and the other chauvinists. Missy and I looked at each other and I said, “I think that sounds like a great idea, Missy.” The younger girls cheered “Girls against boys!” We all shook our fists in the air and gave one another high fives.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Marlboro Man and Tim snickering. “Whatever you girls think,” they said. “We didn’t know you came here wanting to get beaten so handily, but it’s fine by us if it’s fine by you.”

I seethed.

And then I called a huddle. “Girls,” I pleaded. “My life’s happiness is tied up in beating the boys and pummeling Tim in the process. We can not compete with them in terms of sheer aggression and force, so we have to get ’em with our smarts.”

And please don’t be offended that I made that generalization, but in my experience it’s true. When it comes to things like paintball competitions and eating pizza, boys are deranged. Girls aren’t.

It was then that I laid out our strategy: We were in the jungle of Cambodia, I explained to my paintball sisters, and we had to be snipers; our lives and my contentment depended on it. We had to sit. And watch. And wait. And call out support to one another. I knew that there was no way the five members of the boys team could possibly have the patience and wherewithal to sit and watch and wait. They can’t even wait ten seconds after I pull cookies out of the oven before they start devouring. Testosterone would eventually get the better of them and force them toward us. And if we just stayed put and played it smart, we could pluck them off one by one.

 

And that is precisely what we did, and precisely what ushered in a 3-0 victory for the girls’ team. We beat them—killed them—over and over and over again. It was beautiful, sweet, and wonderful. And when it was over, Tim and Marlboro Man attempted to assuage their contused pride with taunts suggesting that we didn’t really play…that we didn’t get in the game…that we just sat and waited.

“What we did,” I said. “Was live. And when you’re trying to evade the enemy in the jungle of Cambodia, living is the name of the game.”

Then they grumbled and growled and said something about the fact that we were in Oklahoma. I just smiled politely.

Then they bought a thousand more paintballs and said, “Let’s go to this other course.”

The other course was terrible, as it consisted only of barrels in an open field—not ramshackle wooden structures in a forest like the course before it. The boys beat us twice in a row, but again—that was only because of the testosterone, and because Missy and I are curvy and our beautiful hips and bosoms stuck out from behind the barrels a little too far. It certainly wasn’t because of any skill on the part of the boys.

But then.

But then. At the very end, the kids were fresh out of paintballs. So we let them stand behind the net and coach as Missy, Tim, Marlboro Man and I split into married couples for one last round.

“Honey,” I said as we made our way to the starting position behind two large barrels, my confidence waning as the hits I’d taken in the prior two rounds began pulsating violently. “I don’t know if I’m going to make it through this one.” Tim was gunning for me; I felt it.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Just stay here and I’ll advance forward.” My heart began to race.

As soon as the round started, Marlboro Man took off and left me and he and Missy engaged in trench warfare, which ended in both their deaths. As soon as Tim saw that they were both out of the picture and that the entire day of competition was coming down to a battle between the two of us, I could see the glee emanating from his body in an acrid green cloud. I felt hopeless, helpless, vulnerable, and alone, so I did the only thing I knew how to do: I ran full speed toward the barrel behind which Tim was hiding and pumped four rounds right into his buttocks. He didn’t even see me coming.

 

But a couple of them missed and hit his arm. I need to work on my aim a little.

“I never thought in a million years you’d do that!” Tim cried, licking his wounds. “What happened to watching and waiting and being a sniper?”

I smiled and crossed my arms, saying something about it being a woman’s prerogative to change her mind and how do those welts feel, Tim? Then Missy cried out from the trench, “Uh, Ree? Can you give me a hand? I can’t feel my right leg.”

My kids cheered from behind the net, with a mixture of both elation that their mama had defeated Uncle Tim…and shock that their mama had defeated Uncle Tim in her platform sandals.

I’m still flying high from the feeling of being cheered on by 6 to 12-year-olds. It might get me through the next ten years or so.

How very far I’ve fallen.

 

On another note: paintballs hurt.

Paintballs really hurt.

In fact, I have a hard time believing this kind of thing is legal.

This is just one of the many reasons I love living in Oklahoma. There’s just not a lot of bubble wrap around here.

Love,
The Sniper