My biggest mistake

I don't like to think about the mistakes I've made.  Sometimes I consider what I'd do differently if I were living my life over.  One thing is that I'd have started developing my singing and acting talents while still young. (As it is, I've started developing them in recent years.)

Another thing is that I would have made a bigger effort to reciprocate friendliness.  There have been times when people were friendly to me and I was capable of nothing beyond an awkward response. (My social development has been slow, possibly because of Asperger's Syndrome.)

There's one mistake that I remember in particular, though it certainly wasn't my biggest one.  Back in the 1990s I moved to London for eight months to research my Ph.D. thesis and was living alone for the first time.  On my first weekend there I went out to do some shopping on Oxford Street, which has a lot of stores.  Unfortunately, that weekend was the 50th anniversary of V-E Day, and they were having a big World War II exhibit nearby in Hyde Park.  So Oxford Street proved to be even more crowded and uncomfortable than usual.  It was the wrong time to go there.

The funny thing was, I actually ended up feeling pleased about this mistake, because it was my mistake!  I liked the feeling of being completely responsible for myself, even in my mistakes.  I made a mistake and world didn't stop.