It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. My community lived in relative peace -- shopping, sunbathing, recreational surgery -- while in the hills of Simi Valley underage kids were being gunned down by paintballs.

I'm a pretty peaceful dude. If I were king, our troops would shower the Middle East with LSD until they all discovered oneness. There would be no Us and Them, just Brothers of the Blue and Green Marble.

"This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius..."

You can see, then, why I might balk at the idea of paintball, and by "balk" I mean make the sound of a chicken. Still I showed up at Paintball USA, where players poured in wearing camouflage and motocross helmets. I looked for, but could not find, Mad Max.

Mike Schwartz, owner of Paintball USA, Close Encounters, says that it's like playing G.I. Joe but in real life. I myself was into PlaySkool, and casualties were rare. Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down.

At the sign-in desk we found Art, head referee. Art would not divulge his surname but swears that he is not running from the government. Art, in fact, had the hyper-organized feel of a Green Beret and probably knows the truth about Roswell.

Art wasn't the tallest guy in town, but you got the feeling that should you cross him, he could skeletonize you by hand. Remember Vavoom from Felix the Cat? The one who started avalanches with his voice? That's how Art covered the rules.

"DO NOT SHOOT THE LIZARDS. THEY WILL DIE."

Art led the way to battle, his Lieutenant Dan to my Forrest Gump. He was already splattered with paint and looked like Abstract Art (buh dump bump). We arrived at The Jungle Field, which teemed with the abandoned tractor tires that are indigenous to Simi Valley.

Twenty-six-year-old Mike Corral had driven all the way from El Monte to kill me.

"Don't worry," he said. "You'll barely feel it."

At which point Ventura native John Bonzagni revealed a jawbreaker-sized welt pulsing in his neck.

High-end paintballs rupture more easily and therefore hurt less, the moral being to fight with the most affluent enemy possible. Paintballs come in every which color, making the mountain look like Whoville and smell like a box of crayons.

Shhh -- Art was giving the countdown:

"REMOVE YOUR BARREL PLUGS! THREE, TWO, ONE ..."

At the whistle we all charged forth like Children of the Corn shooting everything but the lizards, Montague versus Capulet, Hatfield and McCoy. Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow. Oh, the humanity!

Thank God for my war caddie, Ramon Godinez, who headmans Zephyr Paintballs in Ventura. Ramon strode the battlefield chin up like Achilles or Hector or Antonio Banderas.

Filling my gun with marbles, he said, "Make yourself as small as possible and hug the bunkers." Which is pretty much how I live anyway.

Games are refereed by teenagers in crossing-guard vests. You can also identify them by volume: "LET HIM OUT! HE'S BEEN HIT! VAVOOM!"

Shooting a gun satisfies your hands like they have their own erogenous zones. I aimed at an overflying Cessna and Art brought me back to earth: "HEY! HEY! HEY!" (Art can see out of his ears, something they teach you in the Green Beret.)

Referee Bryce Clatt stood on a tree stump to shelter our video whiz, Anthony Plascencia, who got pummeled anyway -- once in the butt and twice in the camera. It looked like he had been egged by the Easter Bunny.

"CROSSFIRE DOES NOT CARE WHO YOU ARE. WEAR YOUR HELMET AT ALL TIMES."

Ramon nudged me forward, which disagreed with my chief military objective -- to stay close to Ramon. I rolled into a somersault, knowing from Walker, Texas Ranger, that a man is invincible while performing the somersault. Unfortunately, I hadn't locked my hopper and -- rookie move -- lost my marbles. So it goes.

My trusty war caddie brought more, and soon I was wreaking havoc on Them. I didn't have a target, just a message: This guy is crazy and seems to have unlimited bullets.

Paintballs are the most expensive part of the show. If you're not careful, you could blast fifty dollars in a day. The cheapskates are the ones on the perimeter going, "Nope, not a clean shot ... wait ... no ... OK, pow..."

Ramon spotted a man for me to shoot.

"Shoot him?! I don't even know him."

I fired frantically through a coward-hole in the plywood until Ramon, my periscope, said, "You got him! He's hit!"

I was a made man.

Ramon pushed me toward the foxhole, where I was lavished by enemy fire. I turned back to Ramon, who shook his head no, so I started back and forth like a duck in a carnival game until OUCH! SON OF A --

A paintball thwacked my middle finger, which throbbed like a dozen bee stings and would make it difficult for me to communicate in traffic.

"I think you're out," said Ramon.

"No, I can go on. Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down."

A crossing guard appeared overhead. "He's been hit! Let him out!"

I slouched off the field -- helpless, impotent, a nine-fingered freak. Paintballs popped in the distance, felling comrades who, sadly, had started high school only this year. For them, too, darkness would soon descend on the Crayola-scented dream.

Fallout

What did I think of paintball? You want to know the truth? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH.

Seriously, my facial tic has died down and I've almost stopped clenching my teeth. The shrink says that someday I won't even remember The Battle of Whoville.

All things equal, maybe paintball could be used to decide all military conflict. I mean, isn't dying a formality anyway? Why not paint each other up -- spray paint, enamel bombs, whatever -- and the country that comes away cleanest wins.

Then we could all clean off with a giant water balloon fight while Blue Angels drop daisies from the sky and we swing from abandoned tractor tires:

"This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius..."

I'm at that age where things are starting to fall apart. Doctor Lynn said that my warranty must have expired.

I won't give my age for religious reasons, but let's just say that my pants are up around the navel. That's how you can tell a man's age: The beltline starts in adolescence around your knees and creeps ever upward until the paramedics finally pull the pants over your head and pronounce you dead.

Memory is also on the skids. Have you ever walked into a room and forgotten why you were there? I took it to the next level...

"Why the hell am I in Target?"

I wanted to ask a clerk, but they're never helpful that way. I shopped for two hours and still don't know if I got what I needed. So it goes.

My grandpa reached the age where you stop caring altogether...

"Grandpa, will you pass the yams? The yams? THE YAMS."

Oh, he heard us just fine; grandpa had simply moved on from passing yams. He also backed into traffic without a peek, figuring that he had lived so long he must be invincible.

I'm not there yet, but my math has gone from a B in trigonometry to this: Save $2.15 on four cans of tuna ... Four goes into ... Something cents per ounce ... Do I really NEED tuna?

Math loss comes from having too much stuff in our heads. By middle age, math is squeezed out by user names, passwords, credit cards, PIN codes, bank accounts, phone, fax, cell, pager, lyrics to songs we don't even like!

Some say a child is born the moment it's conceived, but I beg to differ: Can you imagine tacking nine months on to your age?

When I was growing up, guys wanted to look like Robert Redford. Now we're all trying not to look like Robert Redford. Sure, wrinkles make you look distinguished -- FROM YOUNG PEOPLE.

According to the beauty girl at Macy's, my crow's feet defy ointment and I really shouldn't have smiled so much. My "problem area" is the forehead, where creases are so deep that pug dogs feel sorry for me.

My friends are getting weird about the hairline. One decided to shave his head and grow a goatee ("The Satan Look"); another purchased magic spray-on hair ("The Chia Pet Look"). A third just stands outside the hair salon with his nose against the window.

I don't see the big deal about receding hairlines. What we should really be afraid of is advancing hairlines ("The Chewbacca Look").

But we decaying people have more pressing concerns, a medical situation that worsens by the year. I am talking, of course, about Unplanned Flatulence.

In our youth, UF is confined to the gym, but in time we can't even climb a flight of stairs without becoming a motorboat. I myself ruined a candlelight romance by fizzing in the bathwater. Male fish must have the same problem -- you just can't get away with underwater gas.

Doctor Lynn recommended a change to my sodium, so I took his advice with a grain of salt.

I'll leave you with this list, which I compiled outside of Target while scratching my hairline.

"You Know You're Getting Old When..."

* people compliment you for how good you used to look.
* you drive with your hands in the 10:00 - 2:00 position.
* you pull a muscle while applying Ben Gay.
* you work sex into the laundry cycle.
* you "sleep in" till seven a.m.
* you bowl for exercise.
* you say that "age is just a number."
* you forget things ... like stop signs.
* your dog drags around a fire hydrant.
* there's no room left for mental notes.
* you recognize your furniture in the antique store.
* you sing along with elevator music.
* you finish entire novels over a bowel movement.
* you announce said bowel movement to family and friends.
* you stop bending down to get things and learn to use your toes instead.
* you eat your raisins one at a time.
* your just-woke-up face lasts all day long.
* you start to write lists like this one.