Strange and Exciting

So I'm over the moon, because I just placed first in quick draw competition, where a bunch of painters come to the same place, and complete a painting in a limited time.  I competed with artists I respect a lot, who have a lot of talent and skill and are quite frankly much better painters than I.  The judges were yet another really wonderful artist and a mayor. 

Here's the story that makes the whole thing even more amazing.  There were a couple of San Gabriel High School student performing community service who were assigned to assist me.  There was a boy and a girl, and although they wore name tags and I'm good with names, I could not tell you what their names were.  Their function was to help me out by watching my stuff if I went to the restroom and getting me food and water and the like.  They may also have been monitoring me to be sure I complied with the rules of competition.  They were very kind and helpful, but there was a little bit of restless hovering going on.  I saw a lizard out of the corner of my eye, and I pointed it out to the kids.  At some point, about halfway into the painting, I told the kids to walk around and look at the other paintings, and come back and tell me if there were any that were worse than mine.  They came back a while later.  Well?  The boy responded, What do you want to hear?  I said, "tell me if there are any paintings that were worse than mine."  No, the boy said.  No, the girl confirmed.  They provided a brief explanation for their assessments.  So I said, "Well, honesty is good."  I went back to painting, possibly with a bit of fire lit under me.  Time passed.  Some people passed and noticed the lizard.  Some people passed and seemed to like the painting.  The painting improved some.  I decided I was done a long time before the time was up.  Before I left to go walk around, I told the students to look at the painting and see if it needed anything.  I came back.  The boy said it didn't need anything, but I could paint a lizard if I wanted.  So I did.  See it?