Wow. I'm not even sure where I should even begin with this story. This is truely the most amazing and luckiest event in my life.
Yesterday I had a friend over to enjoy a good day of back yard paintball. Before I tell you the whole story, remember this: my friend can't walk (the trigger) very fast so I allowed him to set his gun on 3 round burst, which repeats at a rate of 10bps.
Now, on to my story... We had everything setup better than ever... we even had a snake this time. The field setup was the best job we had ever done. So after a few games we went back to our "staging area" which is one of those wrought iron back-yard tables, no more than 2 feet arcoss and maybe 5 feet long, to wipe the paint off our guns and clothes and to reload. I sat down in a chair across from my friend while he was wiping paint off his gun. He was making some joke and I had my head down laughing. So I finally stopped laughing and looked up to see what he was going to do next. Well remember the table I said was no more than 2 feet long? I looked up right into 16 inches of aluminum. I was about to open my mouth to say "Hey you should put your barrel sock on," while I was thinking
surely that thing isn't going to... and then.... BAM BAM BAM. I didn't know what the hell was happening. I felt a paintball smash into my left cheek at over 240 fps (backyard speed, hehe) and watched in horrorifying slow motion as the barrel moved up and to the right, a puff of smoke coming out of the porting, and then I saw a bright red ball of death flying straight at my head. I was so scared I couldn't move; I couldn't even blink. If I could have, I wouldn't have had time to anyways. I don't really know exactly what happened. My vision splattered with bright pink, and my eyes were burning. Naturally my hands shot straight to my face and I started screaming. Now remember that the three round burst takes place at a rate of 10bps, and only 3 shots were fired. So all this happened in less than half a second, but it felt like at least half a minute.
I was scared, confused, but most of all angry because my life had just been ruined by an avoidable accident. But then I took my hand off of my face. I couldn't feel much of anything, every part of me was numb. I opened my eyes and to my terrific amazement I could still see, and I was seeing through both eyes. Everything took on kind of a white creamy/fuzzy look, and it was very dark, but I was very happy because I could at least see that much. I don't think I had ever been that happy in my life; I'm not sure I ever will be. My eyes weren't hit after all. My friend was standing beside me by now asking if I was alright, the mature part of me stopped screaming and stood up, and I said I was alright. He rushed me to the water hose in the back yard to get all the paint out of my eyes, as a decent friend would do.
Now I have to tell you, my little brother was standing there the whole time. And that little ****, he was laughing as if nothing in the world was wrong, and not trying to help me at all. He got in trouble for laughing because I couldve been in the emergency room having what pieces were left of my eye being surgically removed from its socket. Anyways, back to the story.
It turns out the switch on my friends gun is broken. It doesn't have it's "springiness" so it's permanently mashed into the gun. You need either a pen or really long fingernails to reach it. He held down the button for 10 seconds and because it has an LCD screen you can't see it very well when it's bright outside, which it was. So long story short he thought that the gun was off but it wasn't, and I got shot in the face. Now the reason the gun went off in the first place is because there was paint on the trigger and inside it. He was trying to wipe it off and he pressed the trigger down. the paint on the switch caused the trigger to stick and the whole 3 rounds of the burst were fired. However, there are only 2 marks on my face. We don't really know what happened to the third shot. It could have hit me in the same place twice, or gone into the bushes behind me, or hit me somewhere else and I just didn't feel it. There was no paint on the fence or the house behind where I was sitting.
So now to describe the hits. The first one I want to tell you about it is the one on my cheek. It landed a mere 1 inch (or less, I haven't measured) from my left eye. The next one (or 2) hit me right between the eyes. Had it moved even 2 or 3 CENTIMETERS to the left or right, I would have been blind. From the spacing of the shots and their position on my head, if I had turned my head to the left an inch or so, both shots would have gone into my eyes and I would be blind in both eyes. Talk about luck...
And now on to the fun part... the pictures. I think most of you will gasp in awe when you see how close I was to never being able to play paintball again, or even being killed. And without further adue (or however its spelled)
notice the blood shot eye... I was picking pieces of shell out of that one in front of my sink for at least 10 minutes before I finally got everything out.
heres a side view
I would say I am one lucky bastard. Both of those hits made me bleed, and from a little over a foot away, they were numb for 5 minutes, and then it really started burning as if someone were pinching me as hard as they could. Well I hope this makes someone's day.... it's not very often you see something that freakin close to a serious injury without actually seeing an injured person. I consider this a late christmas persent, since it's alot better than the alternative. And by the way... those pictures were taken about 6 hours after it actually happened... so they had considerable time to heal.
I am officially THE luckiest person on earth. (with pics)
