War is hell, except with this game

The adventures of parenthood can take you far out of your element.

I've probably never been so far out of mine as last weekend when I spied for U.S. forces along the border of Georgia and Russian.

Part of a small band of Chechen villagers caught in a conflict between Russia and NATO, I waved an American flag when the U.S. ambassador came to our village to meet with the Chechen leader.

Then a Russian sniper hidden in the Hotel Kabul across the street took him out.

How did a peace-loving mom end up in the thick of battle?

My college-age son plays Airsoft.

Airsoft players form teams and gather for weekend games to replicate combat from old wars or create missions about current conflicts. They wear fatigues or Special Ops outfits and use rifles or pistols that look real, but fire plastic bbs.

I was only begrudgingly tolerant of the hobby, but after his last Airsoft excursion, my son showed me a newspaper article about the game.

Needless to say, Airsoft is predominantly a guy activity.

But the article quoted a mom and son who played the game together. So I joked I was going to tag along to the next one, too.

From there, the possibility became a kind of dare.

I was trained in the backyard with a basic lesson in handling an Airsoft gun and by being shot in the rear to see whether I could stand the pain of a hit.

(Piece of cake after three missions in the maternity ward.)

Soon thereafter, Russian-style camouflage jackets and pants were purchased, as we'd be on the Red team.

We took off for Starke the Friday before Labor Day with one of his friends who was also playing and checked into a small hotel packed with men in fatigues.

A variety of factors -- chief among them the fact I was scared witless about jumping headfirst with no experience into an activity taken dead serious by its practitioners, some of whom are vets -- intervened in the plan to be a pistol-packing mama.

An opportunity for those who didn't have working guns or couldn't pay the game entry fee to play other roles arose, and I ended up being conscripted to help create the fog of war as a villager.

Things got dicey quickly, however, in the broiling heat of the mock village at an Army urban terrain facility in the boonies of Central Florida scrub where the game was staged.

The other Chechen woman I thought was my ally turned out to be a Russian with a weapon hidden under her skirts.

Left and right, players took hits. Once shot, they were supposed to don a red kill rag to indicate they weren't worth shooting anymore, and then exit the game temporarily.

Some didn't want to admit they were hit, a source of contention and much cursing from both sides.

Later in the game, we Chechens became spies to feed info back to the U.S. commander on movement of Russian troops.

Since my kid was playing a Russian, this was an interesting conflict of interest.

Not one, however, that bothered him. After I took a hit in the shoulder, I heard him laugh and tell his comrades he'd just shot his mom.

I returned to him the universal symbol for you'll get yours, too, buddy, put my kill rag on my head and sat down.

Amid orange drifts from smoke grenades and the booms of M-90s, sweating like a pig, feet blistered, I was grinning.

Real war is obviously not a game or a good time.

The Airsoft weekend was.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly why.

Contact Clifford at aclifford@brevard.gannett.com.