Welting in the sun AKA Playing paintball near Joliet

There is something goofy about playing with toy guns that shoot paint pellets when there is a real war happening, something silly about staging fake battles on grounds set up to look like ruined cities, junkyards, or Midwestern Joliet jungles where cicadas make strange noises like ambulances crossed with music from a Hitchcock film.

It’s odder still to see an Army recruiters on the grounds of the place, three of them in fact, spending their time playing video games while waiting for someone to amble up to ask about signing up.

One guy with the group I went with wondered aloud if you could enlist just to play paintball. And I wondered why they were playing "classic" rock so loud. Yes, I am pretty sure I heard some .38 Special.

I was there as a part of a group of 11, a bachelor party event for a guy I work with made up mostly of lifelong friends. I was the only guy from the office to show, and I am quite sure I was the oldest guy in the group.

I didn’t really feel old until we started to play. That’s because when I looked around I saw a lot of middle aged guys in the midst, a good many of them dressed from head to toe in camouflage outfits.

The place was a veritable sausage fest, with maybe 10 women present and just a smattering of younger kids.

I thought I recognized one of the wannabe warriors, a baby-faced chubby guy I matching camo pants and t-shirt. But my buddy doesn’t smoke, and he doesn’t use an inhaler like this guy did before he headed into the woods to shoot at and with his pals.

I had never played paintball before. The closest experience was heading to the Field Museum in college on a slow day during winter break with four friends with toy plastic stick-em dart guns, stalking each other down the halls filled with stuffed animals.

I have never even shot a real gun, not for some pious reason, but because of my usual one, namely that I am cheap. I think I’m also afraid I secretly might enjoy it.

Anyway, we played for about four hours, and nine of us were suited up with rental guns and masks. Not owning any war clothes, I wore a pea green long Henley and a pair of pants the same color. I looked like a big, melting crayon.

Wearing a mask worn by someone else is just a step or two above borrowing someone’s jockstrap. In fact, I wore one of those too, a NEW one with a cup, as I had been warned that you can take a few hits to the balls.

Two of the guys had their own guns, one fresh out of the box, with a price sticker of $299.99 still on it. The other gun owner not only had his own weapon, but an outfit that looked like something out of the ancient videogame movie, “Tron,” replete with special paintball shoes, even.

Now a guy like that can be a real jerk, but this guy seemed nice enough. He didn’t really lord his paintball-ness over the rest of us. His gun though, pretty much shot like an automatic, the theory being if you spray enough, you are bound to hit something.

Again, me being cheap, and paintball pellets being sold for more than $60 for a box of 1,000, did not make for a good paintball-playing mindset. Neither did the fact the first helmet I wore had scratched lenses, like beer goggles without having to get drunk.

My first game, a jaunt into the woods, I lasted maybe a minute or so before getting pelted lightly. Next game I didn’t last too long either, prompting my work buddy to ask if I was having fun.

I said I was being suicidal (actually it was just being passive). I also thought it would be sick-cool to rig up some sort of paintball car bomb, but that’s neither here nor there. And neing picked last? That made me misty for grade school.

Then again, I also was playing with a group that included guys who are and/or were in the armed forces, a few cops and a video game designer. Yeah, being pretty much a pussy, I was way out of my league.

Unlike real war, you get to rest and have drinks and snacks between short battles. It made me realize even more how shitty it must be to be in a place like Iraq where the temperature reaches 110 and you cannot call a timeout to go get a hot dog and a pink lemonade.

As the day progressed I at least started to get a feel for the game and lasted a bit longer on the fields. It helped that I was on a team a bit with a guy in the Army who knew how to give orders. Not that I know how to follow instructions, but at least they were being offered.

Being hit with the paintballs can sting a little and leave welts, a macho memento to bring home. And the bachelor got hit under his arm in a place that must have pinched a nerve, as he writhed around on the ground as if he was having a heart attack or had been stung by yellow jackets. He also got pelted by everyone in the last game as part of his bachelor party initiation rite. His hand started twitching, too, but that was dehydration.

Worse than shaking, the splatter on the shirt or pants can look downright obscene, as if marking you as a compulsive masturbator. It does wash off pretty easy, which is a good thing.

Would I play again? Maybe - with a group of out of shape guys over 35. Or maybe in a pool, which is to say, a coed watergun fight is more my speed. Speed, not Speedo.