Rory Gibson: My experience playing paintball with my sons

Be careful of taking on your sons in a ‘game’ of paintball, writes Rory Gibson.

Rory Gibson had one paintball experience to remember. Photo: Claudia Baxter / The Queensland Times

Most parents will, at some point in their child-rearing journey, make decisions regarding their offspring they might come to regret.

Was this one of those moments, I pondered, as I pulled on the too-tight camo overalls preparing to engage in a paintball battle against my sons and 10 of their mates.

The boys are aged 27, 30 and 31. They and their friends are fine, strapping specimens full of confidence, protein powder and the kind of unearned arrogance that comes from never having pulled a hamstring while sneezing. I, on the other hand, am a man whose heart rate rises only when I forget where I parked at the airport.

It was my middle son’s buck’s weekend … he’s getting married next month. I was invited along under the quaint illusion this would be a gentle, nostalgic outing - a truckload of beer to drink while watching the NRL’s Magic Round games, some fishing, perhaps the odd fond recollection of their childhoods.

Instead, I was handed a gun, a face mask and 400 rounds of luminous pain.

Paintball, for the uninitiated, is what happens when laser tag mates with Lord of the Flies.

It is a vivid theatre of cruelty, dressed up as team-building. But there were no teams. Only me. And them.

It also hurts a lot when you get shot.

The boys did not “play” paintball. They executed it with surgical efficiency. The youngest, who once cried because I turned off Thomas the Tank Engine, took to the task with the grim proficiency of a Balkan war criminal.

And the groom? My lovely middle boy. The sensitive one. He shot me in the back from close range and shouted, “That’s for all the years you made us eat vegetarian nachos.”

Afterwards, covered in paint and low-level trauma, I realised this wasn’t revenge. It was affection. This was how they said: “We love you.”

I felt overwhelming pride. These lunatics are mine. Grown men who are still happy to spend a weekend with their old man.

That’s what you hope for as a dad. Not perfect sons, but good men who still laugh with you, even if it’s while you’re limping back to the car covered in purple welts.

So here’s to the groom, and to brotherhood. May your marriage be like our weekend - full of laughter, mayhem, and just enough pain to keep things interesting.

Originally published as Rory Gibson: My experience playing paintball with my sons