Saturday, May 31, 2008

My son, the warrior

It's always been a dream of mine to have my son, Alex, enjoy one of my favorite hobbies. And today, that dream has come true.
Alex is a peaceful soul, plain and simple. The boy doesn't have a mean bone in his body nor has he ever wanted to do harm upon someone else. In the past I've tried to get him interested in going paintballing, but it was never something that really peaked his interest. I think it may have been the thought of chasing after someone and shooting at them with a paintgun knowing that it may hurt them. He's seen all my welts and black and blue marks over the years courtesy of Joel, Scott, Dan, Kevin..some more from Joel, and countless others. But when I told him we were going to have a game up at our friend Joel's farm, he decided that he was going to give it a try. He did, and he loved it.
So like a group of tribal elders, we took my eldest into the woods for his initiation into manhood. Outfitted with my trusty Piranha and some heavy weight "Alpine-flage", (this stuff is pretty thick so if he got hit, it wouldn't hurt as much.)
The setup was Alex and I against everyone else. Out gunned and out matched. But of course we, "The Elders", all talked about it before hand and the plan was to shoot around Alex giving him a chance to get use to how this whole thing works and to help build his confidence! Needless to say in the end we were victorious. He shot out the entire opposing team! The next game was a one on one between me and the boy with everyone else acting in an "advisory" capacity. His job was to hunt me down and take me out. I was armed with only a 12 shot semi-auto pistol and had hoped that we could stretch this out a little bit. I dug into some cover and waited for Alex to come out into a clearing. I was going to fire one or two shots off to his side in hopes that he would duck for cover and I could move to another position and keep the game alive for a little bit. But the amazing thing is, HE DIDN'T BACK DOWN! Next thing I know, I'm shot twice. Once in my gut and once in my backside. The kids a natural!
In the end, I could tell that he felt pretty good about today exploits. One of his first comments about the day was that he was planning on telling a girl he knows all about how he shot out his Dad at paintball. Yes dear reader, he understands things better now. But he still gets tired of me saying, "Pain is temporary, glory last forever and chicks dig scars."
I love that kid.

3 comments:

Chris Blatnick said...

Very cool, Andy! Glad that he had fun. I've enjoyed a few sessions of paintball with my son as well and it was a great time.

Sounds like Alex might have a new hobby!

Unknown said...

You make it sound like it was actually a challenge to hit you on the backside !!!

Glad to hear it loved it Andy.

Dan

Shannon said...

I wish we would have been there! I'm definitely in for the next round.. you and the rest of "The Elders" can advise both Alex AND me :)