Big balls...

Big paintballs that is. What were you thinking?

Both of the round, spherical (not the quarter), colorful items in the picture above started out life as a 68 caliber paintball. The one on the right is fresh out of the box. The one on the left has been outside, on the ground and collecting moisture for three days.

Pull the trigger on the ball on the right and it will rocket down the barrel as it is supposed to. The one on the left will not. In fact, it won't even pass through the hopper feed neck.

It's too big!

Duh!

Even someone with just a minimum understanding of the "round-peg-in-a-square-hole" concept, or in this case the "large-round-object-through-a-small-hole concept, should be able to figure this one out.

Yet every weekend someone (both youngsters and adults) will scoop big balls off the ground, put them in their hopper and then wonder why their gun fires but no balls come out.

I use to go up to them and clear the gun, remove the offending big balls from the hopper, and then explain why it's not a good idea to try and recycle paintballs.

Here lately I clear the gun, explaining why it's not a good idea to recycle paintballs from the ground and then hand the gun back saying, "If the gun stops working because of big balls again you are on your own."

In most cases they figure it out and I'll see them hunkered down behind a bunker clearing the remaining big balls from the hopper. Sometimes they remain clueless and spend the rest of the day dry firing and wondering why everyone else is using way more paint than they are.

I've promised myself I would show more patience this year. After all, I can't expect players to know ALL of the intricacies of paintball.

I'm going to try very, very, very hard to keep that promise.