David Richins - Man of Honor

Though it's much more common these days for women to have best friends who are men, and men to have best friends who are women, it's still hard for a lot of people to understand.  Most just think one of the pair is always looking for more than friendship.  For David and I, such was never really the case.


I met David when I was nine years old.  Our parents were volunteer staff for Cub Scout camp.  David is two years older than me and was put in charge of the Junior and Junior Junior Staff and made us do the dishes, wipe down tables, and mop the floor in the Camp Lawton Dining Hall.  We also sang silly songs, dared each other to swim in the ice-cold pool, raced to the top of Mt. Bigelow while belting out Garth Brook's "Friends in Low Places" and various Annie tunes, put on funny (to us) campfire shows, and tried not to get too scared when the huge black bears just wandered through camp in the middle of the day [Big Bear, Freckles, and Mama Bear - Mama Bear was the worst to spot because you usually saw her and had no idea where her cub was, you just hoped you weren't standing close enough to the cub for Mama to view you as a threat].  I still have the piece of David's iconic Robin Hood felt hat he cut off for me when we retired it and Nummy Muffin Coocol Butter holds a place of honor on my bookshelf [Nummy Muffin is a sock monkey - minus the tail because 14-year-old boys are pervs - we used to hide in campsites. If you found him in yours, you had to sing in front of the whole camp].

As a young girl, I had many tomboyish tendencies.  Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed playing with my Barbies and getting my hair done, but I also didn't back down from digging around in the dirt, riding bikes, hiking, camping, fishing, etc.  Sometimes I was a little (read A LOT) jealous when my brother's Cub Scout or Boy Scout troop got to go backpacking and my Girl Scout troop was out selling cookies.  But, during the summers when I got to tag-along to Cub Scout camp, I learned how to tie knots, start fires, and shoot archery and bb guns.  When I was old enough, I joined the co-ed Boy Scouts (Venture Program) and finally got to go backpacking, learn wilderness survival, and experience hypothermia first hand while "snow" camping.  And I loved it (except for that hypothermia bit) and excelled at it.  David is the one who actually convinced me to try out for Boy Scout Camp Staff when I was 15 - famously quipping that I could "out-scout the Boy Scouts."  And thus, I became the first female Junior Staffer Camp Lawton ever hired.

Working at Camp Lawton together in those youthful days of high school summer breaks, we got tired of trying to explain the platonic nature of our friendship and finally just started telling people he was my older brother.  And, in many ways, David has filled the role of older brother quite nicely [Note: this is not a slight in any way to my actual (younger) twin brother, Timothy, who is a great brother].  He looked out for and stood up for me at camp.  After all, a girl at Boy Scout camp was highly unusual and not all the Scout Masters welcomed my presence with open arms, especially when they found out a girl would be teaching their boys/men-in-training first aid and emergency prep, life saving, knots, climbing and rappelling, and all that other "manly" stuff.  David was usually the first to meet any new boyfriends before they were brought home to my family (Cameron was the first one he really ever liked).  He even used one of his dad's (fake) Game and Fish training guns to scare a date who came to pick me up from his house where I was staying for the summer.  And his parent's have welcomed me into their own as an honorary daughter - most recently letting me crash the past five months when I returned to Phoenix temporarily for work.

But David is also much more than an older brother, he was my first best friend.  He was a sympathetic ear when high school and my parents and my (real) siblings were driving my hormonal-roller-coaster-of-a-teenage-girl self crazy.  When I returned to Tucson for college and he was still living there, he'd play taxi and laundromat whenever I needed.  He got me my first college job at the Student Union cafe where he used to work.  He showed me it was okay to embrace my geekiness, though I still generally resisted until recently.

The thing I like best about David is no matter what, he's always looking for people's best intentions and he always tries to stay positive.  He's very much an optimist, whereas I am very much a pessimist.  But his point of view has often pulled me out of a negative Nancy attitude and put me back on track to accomplishing good.  He won't agree with me just because he's my friend, but he even when he disagrees he will at least let me vent before giving me the perspective check I so very often need.

I was honored to be Best "Man" when David married Lisa almost three years ago and I'm so happy to have him stand with me as Man of Honor in September.