“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”

- Damon Runyon

"If you haven't hunted man, you haven't hunted."
— Jesse Ventura

I breathed in deeply, imagining I could catch the invigorating smell of napalm in the morning. All I got was dank musk of the forest floor, the scent of plastic and the stench of someone else's sweat from the borrowed helmet. And besides, it was late afternoon. My very own sweat was running into my eyes while swatches of sunlight and shadow cut across my vision as I scanned slowly through the leaves and branches that masked my position. Moving only my head, the light glared off of the pits and scratches in my visor and made the shadows seem even deeper as my eyes probed, alert for any sign of danger or opportunity, for any movement of branch or leaf not consistent with the slight breeze tickling through the oppressive valley. I cradled the gun in my arms and flexed my firing hand to keep it from cramping. I knew someone was out there. Someone who wanted to hurt me.

"But not if I see you first," I thought.

Earlier in the day I had set out on a recon mission, moving along the trail in unfamiliar territory as my footfalls competed with my heart beat to see which could pound louder in my ears. The trail was clear. The trail was easy. "The trail is death," I thought to myself. "The trail is the way the fat, stupid animals go and the strong, clever animals wait out of sight beside it and take the easy pickings."

Picking your way through the branches and brambles, with the cockleburs clotting on your clothing, is hard. Life is hard. Learn to move through the forest and you might live. It's a game really, like a snipe hunt. Except it's not snipe, it's snipers, and they really are out there. Is that sweat trickling along my spine or is it the prickly sensation of an unseen gun barrel drawing down on my back?

The first time I was shot wasn't so bad, really. Everything was fine until the moment of sudden impact. "What? Me? Now? So soon?" flashed across my mind, but there was no denying the thick, viscous liquid that came dripping down my visor. I had reached up with my hand, brought it away wet and slick, the goo the consistency of a bird dropping. And it was yellow. Dammit, it must have been Ben who got me, and I was dead — at least until that round of Paintball was finished, anyway. Then I could seek my revenge. That opportunity had come about an hour later when I had Ben pinned down behind a curved metal barrier. I was to his left at an extreme angle that barely allowed me to see him, but enough so I could pump round after round past the edge of the barricade, so close to him that a deep breath on his part would have ended it, yet he held his breath and his unlikely position, unable to return fire. I fired three more quick shots to keep him still and then rose slightly to move to my right to get a finishing angle. Then came the all too familiar whack on my skull as the ball exploded on my scalp, a jet of orange paint shooting through my hair, dispensed by a shooter from across the field. Another important lesson learned: use your head, or someone else will...for target practice!


The Orange Badge of Courage. The paintball struck just above the curve of the hairline.

This time, however, I can make no mistakes. I am the left flank of the line, the end. I am Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine at Little Round Top. If I fall, if they get by me, the bad guys roll into our rear, capture the flag and it's over. My eyes continue to scan the area in front of me. About 30 yards away is a wooden barricade, set between some trees, surrounded by brush. I have already swept it several times. This time a black paint hopper and barrel are sticking up above the edge of the barrier. That wasn't there before! I bring up my gun, let out my breath slightly and wait. As the head inevitably comes up over the wall I pour about half a gallon of paint into the area; had I the time and the inclination I could have tattooed my initials into the wood. Instead I focus on keeping the unknown head down so he can't get an aimed shot off at me. More paintballs are coming at me from my right now, but the angle isn't good and the brush around me too thick to permit a serious threat. I fire some suppressing rounds in that general direction while keeping my eye on the original target, hoping he will take the opportunity to show himself. He does; I add another coat to the primer already laid down. I'm aware of activity to my right, but from my side of the lines, then some shooting moving away from me and then the cry — "The game is over!"

While things had heated up by me, Kevin had grabbed the flag and gone forward, sweeping up the right flank and planting it in the enemy base while my two shooters focused on me. One of these was the Mall Diva. A third sniper, Tiger Lilly, meanwhile, had been waiting on the edge of the action, also focusing on me. "Ooh, Dad, if you had only come forward three more feet I would have had you," she said. "Yeah," I thought to myself, "and if fish had feet they'd be mice."

Maybe next time, kid.

I'm playing in a certain golf tournament tomorrow with fellow MOB bloggers and some Comment Trolls. The summer-long hype and trash talk leading up to this event has been intense and it might seem fitting for me at this point to regale you with tales of my greatest rounds and most spectacular shots. I don't want to put myself in the running for the Spotty, however, and I'm afraid that if I did it also might induce King to move the betting line in the wrong direction.

Instead of telling you of the Bunyanesque drives that split the fairway like lightning bolts, or pin-rattling five-irons, or those wedge shots that landed on the green like a butterfly with sore feet I thought I'd regale those of you still reading with some of my less than stellar (but no less memorable) moments and galactic blunders that have caused me to adopt the nickname "O.B. Juan".

And no, I'm not counting the time my clubs were stolen before I even got to the first tee.

Here's a story that might explain a lot: my wife and I were playing with another couple that are friends of ours and on one hole my approach shot to the green was long and to the left, going behind a stand of small spruce that bordered a road. The other guy was maybe 40 yards in front of the green and while he figured out his approach shot I made my way behind the trees to see if my shot had stayed in play or gone into the road. After a few minutes I found my ball and stepped out from behind a six-foot evergreen to see if I had a line to the flag. Unfortunately that was right at the time my friend literally "skulled" a wedge, sending his ball on cruise missile trajectory that neatly bisected my eyebrows. Fortunately I was wearing a new, crushable straw hat that absorbed much of the impact, though I was left with 14 dimple-shaped blood drops in a round formation on my forehead. I had my revenge, though: the rest of the day every time my friend lined up a putt I'd say something like, "Why is it suddenly getting so dark?" or "Grandpa, is that you?"

My commentary around the greens has been a problem other times, too. Once I was playing in a 4-man scramble where my team was trailing the leaders by one stroke with two holes to play. We had a 25-foot putt for birdie that we all looked over carefully before our first guy stepped up to try the putt. He eyed the line carefully, and in a dead serious tone said, "I am aiming six inches left of the hole." There was something about the tension and the way his voice sounded that reminded me of one of those movies where someone has to defuse a bomb. I suddenly heard myself saying, in the same tone of voice as my friend, "I am cutting the blue wire." The putter froze, and it was deathly silent for about two seconds. Then his forearms started to shake, and then his whole body and then we all started laughing so hard we had tears coming out of our eyes. The worst part was that none of us could stand over the putt without starting to laugh all over again. It was the kind of laughter like you try to suppress when you hear a fart in church, and we were just about as successful. We barely made par that hole and we still couldn't compose ourselves on the final hole and we ended up losing the tournament by one stroke. I thought the guys were going to kill me.

I guess the all-time worst episode was when I was playing on a course near San Diego with my dad, my brother and my uncle. One hole featured an unusual bunker that was actually a hill on the side facing the fairway, with sand on the back side. Naturally I had to push my tee-shot left and into this bunker, finding myself in the sand with an uphill lie, trying to get over a wall higher than myself with no view to the fairway. I tried to hit out and over the wall, but the ball caught the lip and rolled back down behind where I started. This actually gave me more room and a better angle to try to get a wedge to the fairway, so I tried it again. No luck. In fact, worse luck, as the ball came back and rested in one of my footprints. This time I turned and aimed back toward the tee, punching the ball back to the fairway, quite disgusted with the whole affair. I grabbed the rake and smoothed my numerous footprints, then climbed out of the bunker and tossed the rake out ahead of me in disgust. It landed perfectly on the curvature of the tines and bounced back directly at me, airborne as if launched from springs ... and heading right for a delicate part of my anatomy. I twisted away, and the handle of the rake caught the hem of my khaki shorts. The combination of the tines then re-establishing contact with the ground while I turned my body resulted in the right leg of my shorts being torn from hem to belt loop. Keep in mind, all of this time I was out of sight from the rest of my four-some who were up ahead and could only see the occasional bursts of sand as I tried to extricate myself. When I finally came staggering around the side of the hill, the now-exposed inner pocket of my shorts flapping in the California sun they thought I must have been attacked by a wild animal. "Breezy" described the rest of my round, if not my attitude.

Man, I can't wait for tomorrow.