As Robin Williams once pointed out, the army is a lot like the Boy Scouts, only with lots of guns and cooler merit badges. Instead of patches sewn onto a sash, the army gave us shiny medals with silk ribbons. They gave me a few medals. I got one for showing up, one for going to Honduras and coming back STD and kid free, one for going to Germany and not choking on my own vomit while passed out, two for going to Kosovo and not wrecking my truck, and another one for getting out in one piece. They’re in a shoe box at the bottom of a foot locker in my sister’s basement in Des Moines. They’re very heavy.