For/give

I received an odd phone call last night.
This time of year, before Yom Kippur, Jews often ask forgiveness from each other, for having done something or said something which would have been hurtful or embarrassing. Because on Yom Kippur, all the breast-beating and confession to G-d is worth little if there is an actual human being hurting from what I actually said or did to him or her. I haven't done much of this asking thing in my adult life, because generally I try to be kind to people and if I have wounded someone, I probably wouldn't know. But I have done it.
Anyway, the person who called me was someone I went to school with, so since we graduated in 1972, and I think I have seen her twice in the intervening years, she is not really someone about whom I think very often. Or at all. I was intrigued when she confessed her wrongdoing to me, which was in my mind most trivial, and I wasn't even aware of it. As she was speaking, I was wondering if she was in fact, mentally ill. Then I wondered what she really wanted from me. OK, OK, I'm a bit suspicious of strange phone calls.
When I asked her how she was and what she had been up to, the floodgates burst and she talked for the better part of an hour about events in her life which frankly made it sound like a soap opera. I was aghast at some of the things she told me. My end of the conversation went like this:
Really!
Oh that's awful!
OMG, how sad!
Wow, she really said that, huh?
Whoa, that's weird!
I'm sorry to hear that.
Etc. Etc. Etc.
And I meant most of it because it was sad and weird and awful, most of her jumbled tale. She was getting pretty emotional too, but that's how she always was, even at school. And she was always a storyteller, embellishing and embroidering.
And then she said she had written a book, an autobiography,  and had found a publisher (I must say that this made me very skeptical, because I know how bloody hard it is to get a book published when you have no 'platform', i.e., if you are a nobody). And I'm in the book. Well, I'm not worried nor do I think she was trying to make me worried. I don't think she has a grudge against me and I also don't think this book will get published. Just saying.
So she finished up by tearfully asking my forgiveness which of course I gave her whole-heartedly because even at the time it allegedly occurred, about 15 years ago, I didn't notice anyway.
Sometimes I think I am a little too insensitive, but really, there is little that hurts me or that I even notice without laughing at, or that sticks in my memory. (Except duplicity. That, I remember.)
She wanted to give me her mobile number, which I took, but I demurred when she asked me for mine. You can't blame me. I still don't know what it was really all about apart from a wounded soul wanting someone to listen. So I hope I did that well enough.
And if she does get her book published, I hope she sends me a copy. It will be pretty juicy, I'm sure. Just not the bits with me in it, I am too boring.

OK, just thought I'd share that on behalf of the lonely wounded people. I wish them all, and myself, and all of us, and the world, Gmar Chatimah Tovah; to be signed and sealed in the book that matters, the Book of Life.