He says that most of the new advances in paintball happened when folks HIS age started playing. Otherwise, he added, the sport would have stagnated with the old fossils like me playing. At this point I just want to put this kid over my knee and give him a good spanking like his parents should have. I then realize that I can’t (and not because of the legal ramifications) but because my arthritis is acting up and I just don’t have the strength in my hands that I used to. In lieu of some good old fashioned corporal punishment, I politely state there have been many technological advances in paintball since the humble Nelspot 007. I mean, I can see why folks get pretty excited at the "new” stuff on the market and the advances made in technology. However, I’m here to tell you that all this excitement is not shared by those who have been playing this game for a while. (Not for the reasons you may think either like we’re old and senile and jaded.)
This newborn foundling sees this as some sort of challenge to what he probalbly refers to as his "manhood” and he suggests we look at some new technology.
He sights select fire markers because this gets his water so hot it scalds his bladder. (Which was more information than I needed to continue on with life -- but the kid sure can turn a phrase.) I say to him (in my most sarcastic tone) “what a new and revolutionary idea because markers like the Tagline TS-1 and the Tippmann Factory F/A are the cutting edge in technology. A marker that has the capability of full automatic fire and a positive feeding device is such a new concept”. To my surpirse, the simpleton agrees with me! (So my Grade XII English teacher WAS right and sarcasm IS wasted on the slow witted.) I shake my head and explain I was being sarcastic (and he pulls the typical "yeah I know”). I ask him if he’s ever heard of the SELECT FIRE Tippmann SMG 60 which at least a DECADE old.
He scratches his head and so then we get to alternative power sources like high pressure air (HPA). He hails it as new and revolutionary and I say well not really. Markers in the United Kingdom operated on HPA when paintball was first introduced to the British Isles.
So now he’s really getting frantic and he’s slowly running out of things to throw at me because I seriously doubt this kid is going to be a rocket scientist when he grows up. So we get to remote systems and again I shut him down. I tell him that before the pin valve we had thermo valves and they needed specific couplings to attach the tank to the marker. (Many tanks had to be mounted under the stock of the marker.) Those players who did not have stocks on their markers were forced to put the tank in a pouch and run a long high pressure hose from the tank to the marker. (Sound familiar?) I finish by saying that if he thought I was lying there were pictures of these 'rigs’ (as we called them) in paintball magazines as far back a 1987.
Now in desperation (because I shot every one of his arguments down in flames with little or no apparent effort on my part and this is really staring to worry him) we turn to stock class. I say that’s how paintball started -- sure the technology is more advanced but the founders of the stock movement used the limitations we had back in the early eighties to establish the limitations stock class has now.
Then he rattles off something about how something is ruining paintball as we know it. (For the life of me I can’t remember what he cited as an example. I wasn't paying attention by this time. I was really too busy trying to think of a way to back out of this “conversation”. That is, without having to commit a major felony to accomplish my objective. I'm standing there and I can’t think of one way to gracefully duck out that doesn’t involve inflicting pain and so I give up.) So then I tell this reject from a high school debating club some of the many Earth Shattering Things that happened to put the End and Ruination to this sport. I also tell him how they passed by with not so much of a whimper. For instance: when players complained about dual twelve-gram systems (the kid never heard of that) -- and -- they ranted about constant air -- and -- they foamed at the mouth about direct feed (how did you get paint into the marker from the hopper without a direct feed? -- the kid wondered) -- and -- they formed lynch mobs to hang those guilty of the first autotrigger device -- and -- they gnashed their teeth and rended their garments over the first semis . . .
After the fifteenth point I make he seems to have a lucid moment and nods his head as if he actually understands what I’m trying to tell him.
I remark that I’m happy to say that so far no one technological advantage has harmed the sport in any way so try and relax (we’re going to be around for a long time).
Then he really starts to get worried because I know he’s run out of things to say (and he knows that I know). Not to mention that his arguments (such as they were) are just about exhausted (because how much knowledge can you accumulate in such a short a lifespan as his). So he starts to think (and I know he’s thinking because his brow is wrinkled and his eyes have rolled back up into his head and I can hear the faint sound of water gurgling somewhere in his skull). Suddenly he gets a look on his face like someone put ice in his shorts (but later on I find out that’s what happens when the only two clues he has finally meet somewhere in the vacuous space called his intellect) .
He then blurts out that big money tournaments are new (and I say NOT) because the NPPL is no new idea (the actual organization is but the concept is not). National Survival Games ran tourney circuits for years and the American Airgun Challenge (in 1987) offered over $25,000 in prizes.
This is where it got really frightening because now he starts to vibrate and twitch and his face gets all red and spotty. Just before I can do anything I hear an almost imperceptible “pop” and I know that he’s finally lost it. (This is mainly because I seen it happen to Granny in ‘68 and it WASN’T PRETTY.) He then jumps up on the car next to us and starts jabbering like a spider monkey and he takes off all his clothes. (Which was NOT the mental image I wanted to carry with me for the rest of my life.)
When the cops finally get there the kid has managed to pee on every tire in the parking lot and has bitten fourteen people. He didn't bite me, because I’d give him a good boot whenever he’d get within biting range. Of course, the cops asks just what the heck was happening here I shrug and “who knows with kids today”.
So let this be a lesson to you all you adolescent paintballers out there and realize that you can’t impress the old farts. You CERTAINLY can’t beat us. Besides, by the time you DO get smart enough to do both it will be too late to get even with us because we’ll be dead and gone. Of course then you’ll have to deal with some teenage whelp who’ll be teasing YOU because he thinks being over twenty-five is ancient.
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