“How do you find your PUGs?” he asked. I pondered this for a moment. Some are awful and some are great; they’re really a hit-or-miss situation. I’ve been in groups that got wiped out completely in five minutes and groups that took hours to finish one dungeon and groups that took ten minutes to do the same dungeon I just spent hours doing.

“Well,” I replied, “Sometimes  they go smoothly and sometimes they don’t. I guess it’s luck, really…”

Pete looked at me, the look on his face a mixture of incredulousness and confusion. Then the understanding clicked. “No, I mean how do you find them, now how you like them. If I wanted to know if you liked them, I would have asked you ‘How do you like them?’ not ‘How do you find them?’ I’m not British.”

I’m not British, either, so I”m not entirely sure what he was going for there, but…ah, journey to self discovery.

*PUG is an acronym for pick-up group. This means that you’re running with people you don’t know; you just fill out a spot for whatever’s needed.

However, he finally remembered to show it to me yesterday. It is pretty interesting; I imagine it feels like a real gun, though I’ve never held a real gun. Pete tells me it’s specifically weighted to be as close to real as possible.

There’s no children in our house (duh), so I told him it was fine to have it as long as he didn’t shoot me with it because I know that crossed his fiendish mind at some point.

“Oh, it doesn’t hurt,” he said. “You want to shoot me?”

Now…when one’s exboyfriend says, “You want to shoot me?” what could one possibly say besides, “Oh, hell yes!”

So, he loaded the gun with one soft pellet, cocked it for me and handed it over. Then, he went and stood in my bedroom doorway with his back to me. “Just not in the head, okay?” I lowered my aim. He knows me too well.

I shot him in the back and he didn’t even flinch. He picked up the little pellet and loaded the gun again. “See, it didn’t hurt,” he said. I was sitting at my computer, minding my own business, when he turned back and shot me in the thigh.

I don’t consider myself a particularily excitable person. However, when someone shoots me, I tend to get a little perturbed. Actually, I probably wouldn’t have cared that much except…

“FUCKING HELL, THAT FUCKING HURT! COME BACK HERE! THAT STINGS LIKE A FUCKING BITCH! COME BACK HERE, YOU FUCKING LOSER!!!”

…there may have been a bit of a reaction. He danced away to his room crowing that it didn’t hurt and I’m a big baby. Which I may very well be. But I’m a baby WHO JUST GOT SHOT.

Seriously, though, it stung like a little bee sting. To top it all off, I have a little pellet-shaped bruise on my upper thigh. And it’s still sore.

I’m considering taking up archery just so I can come home and say, “Hey, Pete! Wanna see my new bow? Lemme shoot you. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt!”