How I Found Nerd-vana at Boston Paintball
Last month was my son’s birthday and for a party he wanted to go paintballing with a handful of his buddies. I had no problem with the idea. Last year he and a bunch of his friends got paintball equipment for Christmas which we all found out had extremely limited practical use. First of all because parents with a brain in their head aren’t programmed to say “Why don’t you boys head out in the back yard and fire a bunch of messy, potentially fatal projectiles at each other, then come in for lunch.” And second, while there are plenty of places to do organized, safely supervised paintballing, they charge a ridiculous amount and if anyone is having a $50 Saturday afternoon, it’s me playing 18 holes and drinking myself silly afterward. I’ve made the effort to give the kids an outlet for their paintball stuff. I put plywood targets in the woods behind our house, with points that increase based on level of viciousness; deer (50 points), moose (100), bear (200)... up to a terrorist (10,000), Nazi (20,000) and finally a NY Yankee (50,000) and told them to go to town. But shooting at Plywood ARod can only hold the attention of a pre-teenage boy for so long, and I took them down, to the nodding approval of my neighbors.
So I was all for taking his buddies to a paintball place. There were only two problems. First of all, the only place we could find was Boston Paintball in Somerville, which is a haul from the South Shore. (There actually is another Boston Paintball near us, but we checked it out and it’s behind an autobody garage in the middle of nowhere and looked like the place the clown from “Saw” tortures people, so it was “Hello, Zakim Bridge” for us.) The other fly in the ointment was Barstool had one of our legendary parties the night before. Unfortunately for me, it was one of those rare occasions where I, who usually lives a life of monkish self-denial, had too much fun and stayed too late and by the time I was trekking to Somerville the next day, I was in no condition to have the limits of my patience tested. And tested they would be.
It started with the trip in. I piled six pre-teen boys into the minivan. (Yes, I’m not ashamed to admit I own a minivan. My dad drove a Country Squire wagon with fake wood paneling on the side and he was on a carrier in WWII. No one questioned his manhood I assure you.) They’re all decent kids with nice parents, but every parent secretly lumps all their kids friends into categories. They’re easier to identify that way. For this party he’d invited Short Wiseass, Big Doofus, Affable Fat Kid, Spoiled Kid and Other Kid I Barely Know. If experience has taught me anything it’s that you can’t put a group of kids that size into a vehicle and expect them to act like something other than a bunch of lab rats that have been given a dose of diet suppressants. All the way through Boston they were shouting to each other, shouting out the window, shouting to me to find Chris Daughtry songs on the radio... Just an incomprehensible din of pre-teen voices. Like the floor of the Nickelodeon Stock Exchange. For my part, not interested in playing the role of Adult Buzzkill on my son’s birthday, I gripped the wheel, fought my hangover and gave the same passive thousand-yard stare I saw on my father’s face so many times when I was a kid.
While I’ve played paintball myself a couple of times, I was not prepared for the scene inside Boston Paintball. It’s located in a huge storefront in the back of the Emerald Square Mall. And if you’re wondering where America’s slacker teen population is hiding out on a Saturday afternoon, I’ve located their nest. The place is Geek Heaven. It’s Nerd-vana. They might not be purely sedentary gamers, but they’re not exactly the Track & Field team either. Hardcore paintballers are like the result of a cross-breeding experiment between counter culture snowboarder types and the fat kids who play Dance Dance Revolution.
If there’s one concept that sums up American culture in the 21st Century, it’s that we do everything to the extreme. There’s not a hobby, a pursuit, a pleasant diversion, that someone, somewhere, isn’t spending way too much time, money and effort on. And paintball is no exception. When my kid wanted paintball stuff, I got this the whole package of gear at WalMart for about 80 bucks. But Boston Paintball was filled with kids carrying $250-$300 guns with automatic fire and electric auto-feed hoppers. Rather than just wear crappy clothes you don’t mind getting paint all over... what non-slackers call “work clothes,” to a person they were decked out in actual paintball clothes. Baggy, knee padded, coveralls with the gaudy design of ‘70's era family room curtains and that probably cost more than any suit I’ve ever owned.
The first thing I had to do when I got there was sign the kids up. And in this moment in history, in the midst of the Insurance Company Dynasty, that means filling out waiver forms. In an era when peanut butter is treated like anthrax and a jungle gym like a Viet Cong tiger pit I wasn’t surprised. But I had to fill out a separate form for each kid, complete with dates of birth, emergency contacts and next of kin. There was so much fine print in there for all I know I signed each kid up to be the NAMBLA Local Smokeshow of the Day.
All the while I was doing this, the boys were naturally completely out of control. Doofus was smacking Fatty in the nuts. My kid was rassling with Other. Spoiled was looking over his $300 gun. Wiseass was in the pro shop trying to talk the guy into letting him buy a $5 “paint grenade,” which can only be purchased by an adult, by telling the guy he’s a dwarf and very sensitive about it and questioning his age is a hate crime.
Eventually I got through it and paid for the bunch. $211.13. For six kids. All of whom brought their own equipment. I stood there staring at the receipt, dumbfounded like the warden at Shawshank when he finds the letter from Andy. Of course that price includes paintballs, which you are required to buy from them for safety reasons... they don’t want anyone coming in with Teflon-tipped, armor-piercing, cop-killer paintballs... and not because they profit like OPEC from the things. I bought a bucket of a thousand, figuring that would be enough to last six kids a couple of hours. Which naturally made my son go all “My Sweet 16" on me. “That’s all you got? A thousand?! We’ll go through those in like ten minutes!!!” But another thousand would cost me 60 bucks more and I’d have none of it. Besides, I’d already determined the day was shot to hell... this little upset had guaranteed that... so there was no reason to get hosed than I already was.
Next came the orientation. A stoner teenager pulled the kids into a huddle and went over the safety rules, something about keeping your mask on and keeping a safety sock on the end of your gun barrel, to which I turned to the employee next to me and said “If only Jamie Lynn Spears had the same rule, huh?” Vacant stare. “Never mind...” And there were a hundred other rules about velocity settings on their guns or something, no one was listening to anyone except Wiseass, who kept interrupting to talk about paint grenades. But I gathered it’s less complicated to be the Deputy Director of Intelligence for the CIA than shoot paintballs in Somerville.
Eventually they got out on the “course” or “field” or whatever they call it. It’s basically a room the size of a regulation hockey rink with inflated “Moonwalk” type barriers throughout. The referees line teams up at either end, blow a whistle and when you’re hit, you’re instructed to leave the playing area. A minute into the first game, all six kids were standing next to me. “What happened?” I asked. “I got hit,” all six answered. Shots used among the six: approximately 30. At that rate I estimated we’d run out of balls around June of 2010.
Further complicating matters was Doofus had his gun taken away, apparently for taking his mask off which he doofishly denied doing. The ref explained to me he’d have to sit out one novice game. But since there are four different levels, and they rotate through them, the novice game after that one would be, let’s see... June of 2012. So Doofus was essentially done for the night, which while I wasn’t thrilled, was just fine with him because it would give him more time to punch Other in the groin. The rest of the kids took as many turns as they were allowed. While I was waiting it out, I became aware that everything in the place, every floor, rug and surface in the place was covered with a oozy, oily, slime, like the floor of a peep show. That was it for me. It had been four hours. Time to go.
By that time the kids were pretty much paintballed out and ready to leave. But only in the way that kids leave, which is slowly, deliberately and distractedly. My kid ignored me. Fatty couldn’t find his gear. Other protected his nuts from Doofus. Spoiled proceeded to clean his gun like it was surgical equipment. Finally I said “I think you kids know I’m done with this place, but I don’t think you fully appreciate HOW done I am.” Eventually I got them out the door. But not before buying them all paint grenades. Plywood A Rod is not long for this world.