if you ever go paintballing, make sure you wear a cup (especially if you're a guy)!

as some of you may know, the blogmaster celebrated his 34th birthday on wednesday of this past week. that being the case, mrs. blogmaster decided to plan (or should i say conspire?) with a friend of mine to come up with an appropriate celebratory activity to commemorate the moment of my birth (more on that below). turns out the two of them came up with the idea of a group man date to bonehead (the friendly local indoor paintballing place). sounds fun, right?

disclaimer: i was not in charge of invitations, so if you are one my innumerable friends who did not receive an invite, i apologize. however, i'm afraid to ask mrs. blogmaster who all was invited for fear of learning who didn't come because i'll just assume you didn't have a good reason and take your absence personally. just kidding.... kind of.

back to paintballing:

i've never been paintballing before and even if i had it wouldn't have mattered because mrs. blogmaster didn't tell me what i was doing last night as i prepared for the evening's events. when i got home aim had laid out my cleats and some warm, but somewhat grungy clothes. i couldn't imagine why i'd be needing my cleats absent a football game which i was pretty sure wasn't happening, so i switched those out for some other shoes and then changed out some other items in the ensemble based on the caveat that i might ruin whatever i wear. all i knew is that whatever i was going to do was cold and dirty. interesting.

next thing i knew, i was waiting at the neighborhood park as a mini-van pulled up to aim and me with a group of guys i know who were all dressed similar to me (except one had camo gear on... he was prepared, but, of course, he knew). i was abruptly directed to get into the van while aim stayed behind and i was carried off into the night. by the way kurt, tell your mom thanks again for letting you borrow the mini-van.

eventually we get to bonehead and the guy in charge gives us the 5 minute run-down on paintballing, safety, and blah, blah, blah... let's do this. i put my mask on and then i put on the rest of my protective gear which consisted of nothing. i felt strangely vulnerable, but somewhat skeptical that being pegged by a paintball could hurt all that badly anyway, so i didn't care. at least i didn't until my friend, shane, who is fairly tough in his own right and had been paintballing before, assured me i would feel it. i started to get a little nervous, but i wasn't about to let the other troops see my fear in the face of imminent battle as it's just bad for morale.

a hellish chaos ensued...

the first couple of rounds were really fun, but that was when my team kept winning and i wasn't getting hit. next thing i knew we were out reloading and mike, the guy in camo who was most prepared having covered up pretty much every square inch of his body, got hit in the neck just under the back of his jaw bone... the one area he left exposed. that hurts. justin was bleeding, and even though only slightly; it was still blood which actually gave him some manly paintballing street cred. shane remarked that he thought he'd broken his finger after getting nailed there by a ball as it was up against the gun, but as the feeling came back to it several minutes later, he realized he was fine. how does this not sound fun?

then it was my turn. someone had the bright idea that we would go out there and do an every man for himself game. problem is that even with all the barriers on the field, given the number of people we had there was no way you could completely shield yourself from every other player. thus, for those who can't do the math, that spells inevitable vulnerability (don't you love mixing metaphors: math and then spelling, where's the parallelism?) as such, not only was it a harrowing moment when someone yelled go, it was the moment when achilles got nailed in his heel, except that it wasn't my heel (i'm achilles in that blatant allusion to the heroic and mostly invincible warrior)... it was a spot that's a lot more tender than my heel. a spot that's a lot closer to my lower mid-section than my foot and, man, did it sting.

my first thoughts were, ouch, that really hurts. then, why am i doing this? then, i guess it's decided: colston's the last kid and the cooper five can be etched in stone, now. then i doubled over in agony and slowly made my way off the field hoping i wouldn't catch an errant paintball to any other part of my body as i headed straight to the restroom to survey the damage. luckily, everything was still in tact, and after the pain dulled somewhat (it still hasn't completely gone away, although some of that might be my imagination as i re-create the incident for you, my zombies, on this, my blog... no, i take that back, it's real) i made my way back out to the reloading area to prepare for battle.

yes, i was wounded, but a mere flesh wound, albeit a mere flesh wound to the goods, wasn't going to tear down the esprit de corps i had forged with my comrades in arms and keep me from engaging the enemy who, incidentally, were also my friends. thing is, my brother, kendall, took one to the crotch, too. kind of odd that the only two people who got hit in that particular region of the body had the last name cooper, don't you think? I mean, i'm no conspiracy theorist, but i see a pattern here...

so, i persevered and from that moment on, the paintballing was still fun, but not quite as fun as i had suddenly become acutely aware of my mortality. you can understand my hesitancy then, when kurt suggested we have the guy running the place go hide each person's gun on the field so that we could simultaneously run for our lives in a maniacal effort to not be the last man standing when the music stopped and unleash the fury of a thousand suns on the less fortunate, or slower participants. in other words, it was another every man for himself war. i reluctantly agreed so as to not appear less than manly (as if maintaining a blog and reading twighlight hadn't taken care of that already) and, as a result, eased my way onto the field with everyone else as we sat there with our backs to the battlefield and hands against the wall awaiting the madness.

it was at least maddening. let me just say that if you are ever with a group of paintballers and you all kamikaze rush a field looking for a weapon to use against everyone else with the understanding that as soon as you or anyone else gets a weapon everyone else is free game whether or not they have a weapon, don't run directly behind another guy. if you don't heed my advice, don't be surprised or call foul when the guy immediately in front of you finds the one gun in your path and you are point blank in his cross hairs and said finder then unloads paintballs on your backside as you run away like a little coward. it's not a good feeling and i've got the welts to prove it... them's are the rules.

bottom line:

last night was a lot of fun. thanks be to mrs. blogmaster and kurt for planning and to everyone else who came. thank you to the hansons for offering the use of their house and to everyone who got together my favorite things (kathryn for the card, aim and elizabeth for all my favorites: hot fudge sundays, cheesecake, dove chocolates, whipped cream, hot chocolate... good stuff). i had a blast and really appreciated everyone taking some time out of their evening to celebrate my birthday.

as a result of the evening's activities, i am thinking of starting a foundation to spread awareness of wearing a cup while playing paintball. funny thing is, i wasn't the only one without a cup... everyone else who even knew what we were doing ahead of time didn't think to wear a cup, either... at least i had an excuse. they were lucky. yes, i am charitable, altruistic and all that other commendable stuff, but the real reason i'm heading up this cause is that i just don't want to see another brother's anticipated activities on the night of his birthday go from celebratory to celibatory all because of a careless paintball accident that could have been so easily prevented. think about it.

in closing, i am enlcosing a picture of me from my early years. we had a work office holiday party this week and one of the activities was a baby picture guessing game where everyone submitted a baby picture and everyone else tried to guess who was whom. turns out the pic below is the earliest pic my wife and mom could find of me. thing is, i'm like 4 years old in that pic.

do you mean to tell me that there is no photo evidence of me existing before the age of 4? this further supports my theory that i was never really born, but created... probably around the age of 4 given the pic. heck, for all i know i was created much later in life and childhood memories were simply input into my mind. how else do you explain the fact that my brother and i are both 34 right now and we're not twins? how else do you explain the fact that i pretty much look exactly the same today as i did 30 years ago? no, i do not have some elixir that preserves my boyish features and, yes, my pic was one of the two pics that everyone guessed with 100% accuracy at the office party. the other was the pic of the sole individual of african american descent in our office.

either way, you've got to appreciate the stylish blazer i'm donning. and at such a young age... the thought alone makes me smile, even if it is one of those half-baked closed mouth smiles i'm known for in all my pics.

lastly, happy birthday to me. live long and prosper.