There’s a moment when you receive a compliment, and you shrug it off immediately as though an insect had just landed on your shoulder. That happened to me when I was sitting on the floor of my fourth-grade classroom, painting a poster for a school project.
The poster-maker job fell into my lap after I lost a game of “Not it.” Truthfully, I was happy to sit quietly and draw instead of fussing with my classmates about how to do our book report.
When my teacher came over to check on our progress, she leaned in and told me how much she liked my painting. I felt a mix of embarrassment and disbelief at being singled out for such praise.
I was even more surprised when Miss J, as we called her, showed up at school one day with a large shopping bag. Inside were paint brushes, watercolor paints, and two sheets of paper rolled up and held together with an elastic.
