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?
