I will start at the begining

02.89 Easthampton Ma.

I had been invited by a friend of the family to go play paintball and always being up for an adventure I jumped at the chance.
the day was set and I was told that I needed to supply my own camo but other then that, they had enough gear.
so I went to the local army navy store and purchased a set of Tiger stripe BDUs, brought them home and came to the realization that it was Feb. in New England, and we all know what that means... yup snow, and lots of it. So how will a camo pattern designed for jungles help in this situation? not very well actually.

so I made a trip to the linen closet and found a white sheet that mom probably wouldn't miss too much.
some grey, brown, and green model spray paint and I had made a fairly convincing winter camo poncho. I was ready to go! And I had built my first paintball related item

The day came and I made the trip to Westfield where the game was to be played. the field owner
(only known to us as "the fat man")
asked for the field fee and paint money from every one in attendance and then loaded us and our gear into a few ten passenger vans and drove us to the field, on the way he made the announcement that if the police were to come we needed to book it because he had no right to use the land we were on! I was young and Really wanted to try this game, so that was not enough to discourage me.

we got into our gear, and I was handed a Nelspot 007 pistol.

MY NELSPOT AND A SCRAP OF MY ORIGINAL TIGER STRIPES


We were given a saftey meeting and went over the field rules. and then a ref walked us to our side of the field. it was probably a 5-6 acre piece of land with only natural cover, we had a game of 30 people split into two teams and we needed to get to the enemy base to grab their flag and return it to out flag station. we had 30 mins. to do this. My friend (Chris) said that when the horn sounded to follow him because he had found a great place last time he played here.
about that time I heard 3......2......1....... GO GO GO from the center of the field.
and we all went for it. I followed Chris as we quickly moved down the field until we hit a gully about 8 ft deep that ran off to the right of the enemy flag station. we got into it and ran down about half way , he poped his head up to guage our location and WHACK ....he put his marker over his head and called OUT he turned to leave and he had red fill dripping down his neck. at the time the gear was very primative and did little but protect your eyes, so throat and ear shots could happen easily. I started to wonder what I had gotten myself into but I wasn't going to stick around to get shot out. I moved about 25- 30 yards further down the trench and found a spot with heavy shrubs at the top I crawled up the side of the embankment and saw the guy who had shot Chris out... I had gotten pretty far behind him! and had an open shot at his back.

I crawled through the brush as quietly as I could and go an unobstructed shot... I raised the nelspot, aimed...... pulled the trigger...... POP a cloud of C02 came from the barrel and the ball was away it seemed like a lifetime watching that little red ball corkscrew through the air going dangerously off course and then like magic it straightend itself catching him right below the left shoulder blade he put his marker up and yelled HIT .... I was hooked, but I was also blissfully unaware of the two enemies that were directly behind me... so I got my first Elimination and shot out of my first game within seconds of each other.
twenty years later I can still remember it like yesterday.