Lifetime Compliments Received

 Not counting academic or professional awards and acknowledgments, here, in chronological order, are the compliments I've received:

1) My father taught me to play checkers, and when I was 10 years old or so, he said I was as good a player as the men who used to meet and play checkers at the Valley Falls Train station.

2) There was a large number of lectors at our parish , and one day after Sunday Mass, Father Ellis whispered to me that I was the best lector of all. 

3) My former gasteroenterologist Dr. G. said he thought I was very smart.

    That's about it, but I just remembered that in the last year or so the neurologist I'd visited said he knew I was smart because I understood the sarcasm he used. If that counts.