If it wasn’t your first time, it won’t be your last.

From Alfred’s journal

The man who sweeps the lot behind the hardware store locked his keys in his truck again this afternoon, and stood there with his hands on his hips in a way that told me the whole history of it. He said something to himself I could not hear, then walked off toward the pay phone without much hurry. That lack of hurry was the interesting part. For a long while I thought of mistakes as a series of singular events, each one needing its own grief, and I spent whole winters apologizing to myself for things I had done twice. If it wasn't your first time, it won't be your last, and the sweeper seemed to have worked that out years before I did. He was back in twenty minutes with a wire hanger and he was whistling.