It all started out as a friendly prank war between friends which got her the ultimate gift. She’s the only female player on our paintball team and yet she still hangs with the boys. She’s a tomboy, but still has her “girly” side as well. One day playing she broke her hopper and couldn’t play so we let her borrow one of ours. The one guy and I decided to have a little fun with her while we built her a new one. See the one guy that started helping me was the one she was in the middle of a prank war with so it was perfect timing. The two of us got together and decided we’d build her a super hopper, one that would last her a while, but still suit her girly side. We chose the Dye rotor as the platform for her gift because it had proven to be a product that was battle tested over time for us. We began by stripping it down to the shell and prepping it for paint. We needed to come up with a color suitable for her so we chose pink. I know it sounds weird but at the end of the day the color is actually pretty awesome. Then I enlisted the help of the wife and mother in law as we were going to make it personalized for her. After several brain storming sessions we came up with putting her name on it as well as all sizes of brass knuckles. After all she was the girly girl but still able to roll with the punches any guy would throw at her. Once that was done we purchased a new black color kit for it as the one it had on before was red. Moving on we reassembled the unit but didn’t do so until the day we were going to give it to her.

Then next part was where it got interesting. A week prior to playing we decided to tell her we had something for her and I believe the exact phrase we used was “It’s going to be epic and tears will be shed”. She automatically assumed we were going to prank her and went in to defensive mode. Over the week she’d make comments like “I’m not feeling good” or “Can you give me a hint”? As it got closer to the weekend she’d ask for hints and the only one we’d give her was “It’s going to be epic and tears will be shed”. Becoming more and more fearful she then moved on to bribery to try and find out what her fate held for her. She made offers over the last few days ranging from her letting me ride her scooter to the offer of washing and waxing my truck for 3 months. I’m not going to lie but the three months of washing and waxing my truck was pretty tempting but I didn’t cave.

Finally the day came to give it to her and we hadn’t a clue on how to present it to her. As she rolled up to the paintball field you could see the excitement and fear in her eyes. The excitement was because she love playing paintball and the fear was due to the fact that she had no clue about what was going to happen to her that day. Getting out of her car we all say hello and smile at her. She then gets a bit more nervous as we’re all talking amongst ourselves. Then it was finally time to present the gift to her and we chose to do it in a silly way. Two of the guys went and held her as I ran at her with something wrapped in a shirt. She immediately closed her eyes and braced in for something that she thought was going to be truly awful. Once I got within a foot of her I raised it up to her and said “Merry Christmas”. You could hear a sigh of relief from her as the guys let her go and she looked at my hands puzzled. We then unwrapped it and she was amazed at what she saw. It was her own hopper and personalized so there was no mistaking who it belonged to. She was pleasantly surprised and I thought there would be tears but there wasn’t. So the rest of the day she played using her custom hopper and everyone loved it.

So the end result for her was she misinterpreted our motives and our cryptic messages. She automatically assumed she was going to be pranked and not that we were merely giving her the ultimate Christmas gift.

Have you ever had anything similar happen to you? If so how did you respond?