Las Correcciones

When I was ten, I got my hands on some standardized tests that identified me as smart and I immediately started acting like an asshole. I corrected my mom's pronunciation of certain words, corrected my dad's fuzzy memory of past events, corrected my brothers' spelling. I caught every verbal slip and jumped in with my fix. I was so smart.
And while my adult interactions with the products of suburban child-rearing indicate that this type of behavior is acceptable or perhaps even encouraged among the higher- income set, in my family it was considered very rude, bordering on monstrous. My farm-boy dad and registered-nurse mom tolerated the corrections for a day or so, and then down came the hammer.
One day I corrected one of my mom's casual mistakes and she just glared at me. Though I was past the age for spanking, I had the distinct feeling that my mom wanted to slap me across the face.
"It is rude to correct other people, and you will not do it."
"Never?"
"Never."
In that moment, I stopped correcting people. Even into my adult life, I have followed the rule religiously, ridiculously. I'm always being asked by friends, "Why didn't you tell me to turn left and not right?" "Why didn't you say something?" "Why didn't you stop me?"
I just shrug.
So, for me, one of the hardest parts of learning Spanish in Mexico is the constant correction.
If I manage to get the past-tense verb out correctly, I inevitably use the "you" form when I mean "I," and someone corrects me three-words into my thought. If I get the past-tense verb and the conjugation right, then I use the wrong "to be" verb, ser instead of estar, and again, I get stopped before I say what I want to say. I use "quince" when I mean "cinquenta." Silvia is pretty good about letting me finish a sentence, but Antonio likes to stop me one word at a time.
I feel like my listeners are judging me as stupid or slow. I feel like they are losing their patience with me or getting bored with me. I start wondering if I'm just not good at this language-learning thing. It's painful. I'm tempted to just clam up.
I realize at some point that my mistakes in Spanish match my bad communication habits in English. Not bothering to pronounce a word correctly if I think it's too long. The old habit of not naming people or things specifically enough because it wasn't cool to do so in my central Phoenix neighborhood. The constant numerical mixups that are becoming more frequent as I age.
I know that what I need to do is talk more. I know I need to stop caring what my listeners think of me, to stop making up my little stories about their judgment. But I can't do it.
I know what I need to do in order to learn is to just jump in, to shoot into the pinball machine and bounce off these bumpers of mistakes and just keep rolling. I need to just absorb these corrections and use them, but instead each one feels like a painful impact that stops me in my tracks.