He was ten and I was nine. At this stage in my life it’s an honor to be invited to a 5th grader's birthday party. We went paintballing and everyone seemed so experienced while I was over standing to the side with the moms since I’ve never even touched a gun before. The twenty three of us who’d be fighting consists of eighteen 2nd graders, two 5th graders, and me, one 4th grader. The second graders seemed to have two settings, slow and dumb, and then there’s mode two, where they’re fast and terrifying.
           

“Alright kids, the rules are simple; no face shots and no groin shots. Y’all got that…umm kay good” said the safety instructor.
           

I gathered up with Jake and Tommy, the two 5th graders, and met behind an old monster truck tire near an old car placed in the middle of the battlefield.
           

“What’s the plan guys? Maybe we split up and circle around them, or maybe we could just climb a tree and get a better vantage point. I honestly have no clue of what to do.” I told them with a quivering voice.
           

“Yeah that sounds good. We can do the first one, I guess. We have no clue how to even fire these things.” They both said more nervous than I.
           

“What? I thought y’all were always talking about how you’re practically experts and you play every week.” I snapped back with confusion.
           

“Yeah we do, on the XBox at home. If you think our parents let us do this weekly, or ever really, you have got to be insane. This one day has taken us eight months of begging and persuasion.”
           

When they uttered those words I knew we were screwed since I could simultaneously hear and see paintballs fly by our tire consistently and we couldn’t even fire our guns yet. We decided nowhere was safe at this point in the game, and I think that got to Tommy, he started screaming and banging his gun against the tire to get it to work. Of course his screaming got the attention of the 2nd graders and our cover was blown.

Jake and I ditched Tommy and let him take one for the team. We promised ourselves we wouldn’t look back at him so we wouldn’t get emotional on the field. But like most kids we didn’t really mean it so we turned around to look at him. It was frightening to see these little 2nd graders. If I’m not mistaken, these are the ones who still can’t use a bottle of glue by themselves. They had moved in on Tommy without him realizing. They were like a group of Navy Seals who still wear pull-ups.

Jake opened his mouth to yell a warning to Tommy, but I stopped him in time.

I grabbed his mouth and said “Are you crazy man? He’s a goner…leave him be to fake his death like a real hero.”
It was like a scene from a war movie, complete silence set over the battlefield. Paintballs from every direction exploded as they hit Tommy’s body.  He fell to the ground and looked in our direction; I can still remember the way his body collapsed as 2nd graders swarmed over him. I think he started to realize in these last seconds he had no chance. That was the last I saw of Tommy...until the ref blew the whistle to start a new round at least.
Jake and I ran and hid in some cattails near the pond but we both knew…we had didn't have a prayer. 

“Wait, Jake our safety instructor told us if we walk to the center of the field with our guns up in the air he’d blow a whistle and we were safe. Why don’t we try that?”

Jake shook his head “yes” in agreement; I’d never say anything but I think he might’ve had a few tears sliding down his cheeks. Jake went first, since he was older of course, after him I ran to his side. We had the guns in the air as our sign of surrender, we just had to wait for the whistle. For some odd reason, the 2nd graders saw our sign of surrender as the perfect moment for an ambush. I took a shot to the shin and fell immediately. Next was Jake with a shot straight to the groin, he fell down in agony. At this point we both began to scream and crawl for the gate that meant freedom.

The 2nd graders must have thought this was a fight to the death or something though because they ran to Jake and me and put their guns to our face masks and pulled their triggers. Red paint was everywhere.
The ref now decided to blow his little whistle and shouted “Round 2 begins kids, isn’t this fun?”