I’m 11 years old, and I’m crouched inside the broken shell of a former London bus. It’s my friend’s birthday party. He turns 12 today, and he has just been shot. Not by a real bullet, of course, but by a paintball. I look over at his father, who is busy reloading his gun’s hopper. ‘This is my paintball gun,’ he murmurs. ‘There are many like it, but this one is mine. My paintball gun is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it…’
Without warning, his father springs up like a sleeper agent given their activation trigger and unleashes a barrage of bullets (paintballs) on a fleeing group of squealing ten-year-olds. ‘Ooh-rah!’ he shouts. ‘Get some!’ Welcome to the strange world of paintball parties.
To comprehend the popularity of this 2000s ritual, we must first understand the game’s origins. In the 1960s, Charles Nelson invented the paintball marker. Nelson’s marker, the Crossman 707, was originally designed for forest personnel to mark trees and livestock. It was a commercial failure. But in 1981, three New Hampshire friends, Hayes Noel, Charles Gaines and Bob Gurnsey, stumbled across a newer incarnation of Nelson’s invention, the Nel-Spot 007, and decided to use the gun to settle a debate about countrymen and townsfolk. (I couldn’t make this sound more American if I tried.) The first paintball game was played between 12 people in a capture-the-flag format. A local forester by the name of G. Ritchie White won by collecting four flags in just over two hours. White never even fired a shot. A year later, Gurnsey and his partners opened the first commercial paintball field. But it would take several years before a paintball crossed the Atlantic and splattered on the shores of the UK.
Paintball’s popularity grew throughout the 1990s and 2000s. The advent of newer technology, electronic guns, bigger venues, greater investment and, crucially, reliable safety gear transformed the game into more than just a niche pastime. It’s hard to track the peak of paintball’s popularity, but most figures tend to suggest it was in 2007 – or just before then. It was also around this time that I attended my first paintball party. It would not be my last.
Every generation has their own shared childhood experiences. For my mother’s generation, these are Arctic rolls, glasses of Tizer, Vesta curries, Andy Pandy (and Looby Loo), the threat of nuclear annihilation as a result of the Cold War, Smash, salt and shake crisps, the Saturday morning pictures, silver jacks, waiting outside the pub for your parents, short trousers until you’re 11, the Moon landing, Babycham and the summer of ’76. For my generation, those born after 1996, these are Dairylea Dunkers, Calippo Shots, Saturday night X Factor, witnessing your parents get sacked during the 2008 financial crisis, Wii Sports, Dick & Dom in da Bungalow, the removal and reintroduction of the blue Smartie, Myspace, Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr, Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man, the London 2012 Olympics, WatchMojo, Miniclip, Jamie Oliver’s healthy school meals, Match Attax, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and – in a much smaller but not insignificant way – paintball parties.
From the ages of nine to 12, my life was measured by paintball parties. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, let me enlighten you. It starts with some unsuspecting parents being swindled by a spotty teenage paintball salesman in a derelict shopping centre. A month later, you’re on a train headed for some liminal nowheresville town on the cusp of the M25 where nothing grows except for blanched personalities and the occasional Toby Carvery. You’re then shepherded to a paintball site where a jumped-up military aspirant gives you a speech about the dangers of shooting your friend in the crotch. You’re given a visor which steams up immediately and stays that way for the remainder of the day, rendering you useless on the battlefield.
You watch from the sidelines as your friend’s father pulls a Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now and disappears into the shrubland with alarming familiarity
You play your first game and get shot immediately. You watch from the sidelines as your friend’s father pulls a Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now and disappears into the shrubland with alarming familiarity. He returns 20 minutes later with a platoon of child soldiers. In the next game, someone shoots you in the back of the head and the paintball fails to explode. You try not to cry in front of your peers. You spend the rest of the match stumbling around – on account of the foggy visor – before falling (and nearly drowning) in a puddle of mud and animal faeces. One of the kids in your group shoots a pheasant in the head and gets taken off the course for the day. At one point, you realise that you need to use the bathroom. You ask your friend’s father if he knows where it is, but he mistakes you for the enemy and shoots you square between the eyes.
When it’s time to go home, your body and mind a shell of their former selves, your friend’s father turns to you and says: ‘What happened out there, bud?’ ‘You shot me,’ you say. ‘You shot me like eight times. We were meant to be on the same team.’ ‘Nonsense,’ he says, ruffling your hair. ‘If I shot you, you’d know about it.’ You wince as a bruise begins to form on the back of your head. When you get home, your mother informs you that Dexter, your other best mate, is having his paintball party next week. And the weekend after that is Liam’s, followed by Callum’s, Ed’s and then Max’s. And the month after that is your birthday. You’ve also elected to have a paintball party.
For four years, it seemed like the only party a boy could have was on a paintball course. By the time I turned 13, I was ready to move on from paintballing. We all were. So that’s what we did. And for years, I harboured a strange resentment for the game. But a few weeks ago, I found myself in one of those derelict shopping centres, and a thought occurred to me: ‘Where is the spotty teenage paintball salesman?’ There wasn’t one. In fact, I hadn’t seen one in years. This is not to suggest that people don’t go paintballing any more – they certainly do – but it got me thinking about our ever-changing approach to recreational fun. Paintball, at least to me, feels very of its time.
These parties ended before we were given smartphones, before we started texting one another during class and before social media became our only form of social currency. Looking back at my list of childhood experiences, I’m saddened by the fact that over half of them involve the internet. This is only going to get worse for the incoming generations. Paintball may have had its problems, but at least it got us outside. At least it’s a memory that doesn’t involve a 4.7in Retina HD screen. And if I have a child, I’ll be sure to take them paintballing – and I’ll be sure to behave as madly as my friend’s father did. It’s a rite of passage, after all, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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