This weekend, Gainesville is hosting two dozen Medal of Honor recipients. Gainesville hosts the ceremony every year. I hadn’t been up for a few years and always enjoy talking to guys who only found out they were heroes in a hail of gunfire.

Each year, Gainesville flies Medal of Honor recipients from all over the country for a week out on the town. The recipients like it because Gainesville is small and patriotic [“a piece of Americana” one said to me], they get to talk to kids at school, and they get time to relax with each other.

Each one I talk to will tell me his story and then end it with some version of, “I just did my job. This award should have my buddy’s name on it who died in the ambush. I’m wearing this for him.”

There’s a chance [an outside chance] I would not think it’s a good idea to run through a hail of gunfire to save an associate, but one of the organizers walked me up to one of the Medal of Honor winners, walked me straight up to an American hero, a man who was caught in an ambush in Vietnam but ran from truck to truck to hand out ammo and tend to the wounded, and said [I swear], “You two have a lot in common. You’ve both been in really bad car crashes.”

I turned around and said, “That was five years ago!” It’s possible I’ve been self-conscious about people still asking me about that crash.

“We flew him across the country to talk about his crash!” Gary responded. “And he’s had a lot more time to talk about it!”

I no longer felt so self-conscious. And the Medal of Honor recipients helped me, too.

The recipients also helped with my transition to Old Man-hood. They talked about how much they like going to schools to talk to kids about history so we don’t keep making the same stupid mistakes.

I feel like I’d be solid at telling kids, “It’s not all about you. It’s not even a little bit about you!” There’s a chance [an outside chance] the Medal of Honor recipients may have explained this in a statelier manner.

I should probably make a point to keep attending each year. While I’m getting the message that kids aren’t learning history, I should probably be taking closer notes of the recipients’ humility.