If I had been the best man at my friend Chris's wedding, this is what I would have said at the toast.
Posted on :
03-23-05 |
“I’ve known Chris for 26 years now. Practically my whole life when you think about it. He was such a great guy to know growing up. Such a great friend. He was always full of energy and had this great sense of adventure. He was the leader of our little band of friends, leading us on without fear into what might be hiding over the corner of the next hill. (Much to the chagrin of his parents I am sure.) We started off exploring Summerfield, the subdivision we grew up in, playing flash light tag until our parents called us home for the night. We eventually branched out to Willow Springs and the surrounding areas. We ended up down below the bridge near our house, where someone had left a huge stack of old Playboys. Young kids with their interest peeked for a good year until the weather took its toll on the paper and we could no longer turn the pages. Out and beyond, to the trails where North Point Mall now resides. There must have been at least three or four abandoned half built tree forts out there, built from wood and nails we stole from the new houses being constructed in our neighborhood. We never actually could figure out a way to make the ladders safe, and sure never got any walls or a roofs installed on any of them. What can I say; we were kids, not architects. To the creepy tool shed in the middle of the fields filled with large strange sharp objects, scythes and saws hanging from the walls that looked like torture devices. We figured many people had been brought there and killed over the years, and we were always looking over our shoulders and listening for anyone who might be coming along to murder us as well.
Chris is an explorer, and I always looked up to him because of that. I was always happy to follow his lead. I always felt very comfortable in that position. He was the guy that when we would hike down a new trail, he would always be in the front of the line, taking the fresh cobwebs in his face, because he just couldn’t stand to walk behind someone else. Over the years he learned to grab an old stick off the ground and hold it up in front of him, to collect to spider webs before they covered him. Chris could always adapt. He was fearless, and never doubted that in the end, on the other side of the hill, things would be great, and the view would be spectacular.
He taught me about music. We started our first band when I was 16 years old. If I recall, we had only learned about four and half songs before the summer break was over, and school was starting again. Me and Chris and Jeff and Mike Bowlin playing away like we were rock stars in his parent’s bonus room. Sweet Jane, Pretty in Pink, and some Janes Addiction song Jeff asked me to sing. I was a horrible bass player back then. But I got better.
When we got to high school, Chris and I parted ways for a few years. I always understood why. He was older than me, and he hung out with older people who liked to do older people things. I remember one day when he asked me to come hang out with some of his friends. He said there would be girls there, a party so to speak, and I remember being too scared to go. He tried like hell to convince me, but for once, I wasn’t able to follow him. I still regret that I didn’t go that day, because after that, the invitations stopped. We got caught in that time where it just wasn’t cool for a junior to be friends with a freshman anymore, but god love him, he still tried.
He went off to college, and as I recall, he said he “majored in Nintendo” and came back from Auburn after only one quarter. Then came that defining day. I remember a group of us, standing in his parent’s driveway as he and Dave Desmelik packed their little car with some clothes and their guitars. They were going on a road trip. Again, heading into the unknown. No fear, only a lust for the next adventure. I remember it like it was yesterday when they backed the car down the driveway in reverse, and Dave put it in drive, and both of them thrust their arms into the air out the windows and howled with joy as they started their journey westward. I was so jealous that day. I was excited for him of course, but it was the first time in my time of knowing him, that he had taken off on an adventure where I knew at the end of the day, he wouldn’t still be sleeping across the street, and I wouldn’t be able to talk to him face to face about what he did the night before. For many years after, I missed my friend.
We kept in contact over the phone. He would call now and then and tell me about all the exciting places he had been to. He settled in Colorado eventually, and spent a few years trying to convince me that I should join him out there. I had kept up with the bass playing, and was getting a little better at the instrument. Finally, he was able to talk me into packing my things and leaving my Atlanta life to come join him out west. He said he had a band, but needed a bass player. He flew to Atlanta, and then together we packed my little Ford Escort with some clothes and our guitars, and we took off to the west. It was amazing. Here I was, on the same trip I had seen him leave on years earlier, only this time, it was me in the car instead of Dave. It felt wonderful. I was once again on an adventure with Chris Lamp, out I-20 to I-10, then up the gut to Breckenridge. I remember him driving my car up the mountain pass to his new home… to my new home, and there was a slight dusting of snow in the air. I remember being so concerned that he might wreck my car because of the tiny bit of snow on the ground. Little did I know what I was getting myself into in regards to snow and winters at 10,000 feet, and how often since I have laughed at myself for being so naïve that I thought this dusting would cause us harm.
A new house. A new city. New people. A buncha fucking hippies. A whole new world for me, and I was overwhelmed. But I always had faith. Always had faith that he would not lead me down the wrong path. I trusted him more than I ever trusted anyone. Our adventures in Colorado are too numerous to share this evening, but I will say that looking back, they were perhaps the most fun, exciting, and most creative times of my life. A new chapter in our friendship was started on that drive out to Breckenridge, which has ultimately sustained until today. There are things in this world I would have never have seen if I had never known you, and for that, I give you my most sincerest thanks.
Now on this day, on the day of his wedding, on the eve of his first born child, I look at my friend, and still see the same guy I grew up with. The guy who has no fear. The guy who will plunge head first into anything knowing that everything will work out all right. I’ve watched Chris grow into a man over the years. I’ve seen him substitute his rambunctious youth with a new understanding of life and a heart filled with love and compassion. I’ve seen him give whatever extra love he had in his heart to whoever might need it that given day. I tried when I was thinking about this speech, to think of sometime over all these years when Chris was depressed. A time when he felt overwhelmed and where he had lost hope, and honestly I can’t think of a single time. Very few people I have met in the world have the tenacity and the energy that Chris has. He is a unique man among millions. He is a man who inspired me to do more that I thought I could do at the time. I imagine he has done this with countless others as well. He is a leader, whether he knows it or not who possesses an infectious energy about him.
And now he is embarking on his latest chapter in life. The chapter where he is a husband and soon to be a father. When I think back to all the things I have done because I knew him. All the things he pushed me into. All the things that became some of my greatest triumphs, I have no doubt in my heart that he will be an incredible husband and father. When he first told me about Danielle, I saw something different in his speech and the way he held himself. He was glowing. He was filled with a certain “giddiness” that I had not seen before from him. I’m sure he knew the day they started seeing each other that she was the “one”. The girl he had traveled back and forth across the country looking for, only to find that she was there in Willow Springs all along. When he learned he was about to become a father, he did not waver. He assumed it was divine providence. He knew it was right, and it reminded me of all the times he marched forth into the unknown, absolutely sure hearted that when he finished his hike to the top of the mountain, that the view would be beyond compare, and the landscapes and possibilities were endless. Only this time, he was taking the cobwebs in the face for his wife and child, and not just a friend. This time, he was hiking forward for something greater than himself. It is his gift to the world; to the friends his child has not yet met. To the lives his children will enhance.
So please everyone, raise your glass to my friend Chris Lamp and his new wife Danielle. May their lives forever be blessed with the same sense of adventure and love that I was fortunate enough to experience growing up. May their children inherit some of this same sense of undying positive thought and grit that their father has. And may the lives of countless others be touched by their union.
And here is to being your friend for the next 26 years. You have made me a better man, and I know this present you have given me will live on with the people you know now, with the people you have not met yet, and with the people I know now, and have yet to meet. I would wish you good luck, but of everyone I know, you don’t need that wish. You already have it." |
