Years later (after I’d published my first novel), I ended up seated at a dinner table with the editor of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. All was going well until I — for reasons I still don’t understand — casually mentioned that I’d once been rejected by the magazine. Killed the mood good and dead, let me tell you.
Let that be a lesson: Never bring up old rejections, especially to the person who rejected you! There’s no point to it, nothing to be gained. It was — and is — a stupid thing to do.