When I was in fifth grade, we still had a form of show-and-tell. I think it was a once-weekly ritual, and as I recall it was about current events instead of toys and hobbies. We were expected to share news.

We had a fat girl in our class. She was lumpy and greasy-haired and taller than most of us, and she had no friends. I tried to be kind to her but she was boring too; that poor child didn’t have the compensation of a good personality. But one day she got my attention.

She came in with a report on spontaneous human combustion. She had a section of newspaper with her but she spoke without reading from it. She looked at the class and talked with a convincing measure of awe. She reported that every once in awhile, not often but enough for science to mark it, a person who was engaged in an innocuous activity would burst into flames.

As I recall, every incident of it was fatal. I guess it happened too fast for anyone to react. A guy might be watching TV, a woman might be sweeping a floor, perhaps a child was at play alone in her room, when from within the person’s body flames would erupt.

Well I was astounded. It was probably that very day that I took the story home. I know I was in the back seat of the family car, brothers beside me and parents in the front, when I shared the horrifying news.

My father chuckled. My mother looked around at me but Dad kept driving and chuckled some more. “Really, Dad!” I objected. I mentioned the name of the student and I assured him that she had the news from authority; she had a newspaper.

I’m sure now Dad couldn’t have asked for a better introduction to the lecture he then gave. That was the day I was informed that I should not believe everything I read, even when the author assures me it’s true. That day opened the door for me to healthy skepticism about reportage.

It was 1960. I was 10, Steve was 7, and Andy was nearly 2. But we all got it. It became one of our family jokes. Spontaneous Human Combustion! Gullible Mar.