I am allowed to make mistakes; it’s how I learn.

There is something you did at nineteen that still makes you wince in the middle of a supermarket aisle.

Everyone else who was present has forgotten it entirely. Not forgiven — forgotten, wholesale, the way you have forgotten a hundred clumsy things other people did in front of you. They were busy wincing at their own.

The allowance is real, and it was issued long ago by everybody except you. The learning happens either way. The wincing is an optional extra you have been paying for ever since.