In my first year of college in Florida, I lived with three other women in a small, magical house on Turk's Cap Lane. The house was hidden under oak trees, it had shiny terrazzo floors, and an unbelievably private pool - it was the perfect place for a party.  A fellow student named Joe lived on the same tropical block, and he was a frequent visitor, obviously delighted to have some new neighbors. Devising a way to spend even more time at the house, he planned a week of “sensual delights” for us, a series of innocent experiences designed to delight each of the five senses. 

This eager gesture was a little annoying, but Joe was harmless, and my housemates and I were game.  For the senses of smell and taste, he brought over fresh loaves of French bread, warmed them up in the oven, and served them with cheese and wine. To delight the sense of sight, he did magic tricks with cards. There was a long-standing offer of massage for the sense of touch (of course), and for the sense of sound, he invited over a bunch of musician friends for a sing-along jam. 

On the morning of the ‘sound night,’ a bunch of us drove to a restaurant for a huge Southern breakfast. While paying my bill at the checkout counter, I picked up two books of matches and put them in the pocket of my shirt, an old, plaid, button-up.  The day went on and we cleaned the house for our first big party, and I must have been pretty comfortable in my old shirt, for that’s what I was still wearing when the festivities began. 

The living room was decorated with strings of Christmas lights and a dim, cozy scene was set as folks started to arrive. Soon there was a group with guitar, flute, and drums, maybe twenty people sitting in a cheerful circle, all there at Joe’s request to serenade the ladies with lovely sounds. The little band was great, the singing was strong, and in honor of our host for the evening, someone suggested “Hey Joe” by Hendrix . We gave that dark, twisted song a lively go, somehow making even that sad tale sound cheerful.  We were really getting into it when someone began “Amazing Grace.” I’ve always loved that song, it has great momentum, and it’s so fun to sing with a loud, silly twang.  

So we were really swinging into this song about holy redemption, holding the high notes on “like meeeeee,” when a flash of light burst in the center of the circle — the music stopped and we all looked around with huge startled eyes, and then everyone was staring at me. Wisps of smoke were rising from my left shirt pocket. I reached in and pulled out the two forgotten matchbooks, opened one up, and saw that every single match head was burned off and smoking.  Only the match heads, not the matchsticks, not the paper of the books, not my shirt.  Both sets of match heads in two separate, never-opened matchbooks had ignited at the same instant, over my heart, in a crowd of people. While singing “Amazing Grace.” Spontaneous combustion. 

Someone said, “What the fuck was that?” and the whole group began chanting “What-the-fuck-was-that!” with freaked out, drum-banging glee. Some new folks arrived just then and said it smelled like fireworks out by the pool. The chant went on, people were looking at me, afraid to get too close, and all I could do was laugh. I think we were too stunned to do much singing after that. 

We talked about it for days, incredulous at this near-disaster-miracle that had occurred in our midst, right on my body. How was this possible? Things actually blow up in an instant, just sitting there? What exactly had we just witnessed? I carried the perfect but burnt matchbooks around campus to show people, for it was unbelievable unless you saw it for yourself — the burn was so clean and uniform, so instant, so precise. Joe was mighty pleased with the grand finale to his week of sensual delights, I had earned brief fame, and the house became a legendary party destination for years.

I told the story to my family, and my cousin, who was a recent and fervent convert to Catholicism, was convinced a true miracle had taken place, amazing grace! She had warned me that my tarot cards were the “doorway to the devil,” so this event gave her great hope. When I told my dad, he roared with laughter and recalled something he hadn’t thought about for decades.  As a young man, he was sitting in a dark bar with a row of hardcore alcoholics. One of the older men pulled on his overcoat and stumbled towards the door and his coat pocket erupted with a flash of light and smoke — his book of matches blew up, just like mine. The old drunk yelled and stomped and knocked around and cussed, the whole bar got into it. My dad laughed ’till he cried remembering the scene, and he did a great imitation of bewildered, slurred cussing. It gave me some comfort to know that matchbooks had, in fact, exploded before. Both my dad and I knew it. 

In the twenty-five years since the Turk’s Cap fireball, whenever something startling and strange happens to me, I can hear the chorus chanting, “What-the-fuck-was-that!”  I still see the looks on the faces, euphoric and mystified in our glamourous, grungy, sparkling youth. We were present for a moment of mystery and it was thrilling.

Recently, I decided to finally look into the science and history behind spontaneous combustion, and I applied the power of Google to the questions that were never answered - how exactly does it happen, what is the chemistry behind self-igniting match heads, and two sets of them at once?

“According to expert phillumenists, spontaneous combustion of a bunch of matchbooks is almost unheard of.” This is a statement on the website of the organization devoted to the collection of matchbooks as a hobby, known as Phillumeny. Just like collecting coins, toy cars, or stamps, some people are serious about their collection of matchbooks, and questions about safety are frequent with beginners. Some collectors remove the match heads, just to be safe; others think this is a sacrilege and renders the collection useless. Either way, combustion is not a real concern.  

The Smithsonian Institution Archives, which deal with the safety of collections of every type, recommend removing large quantities of sulphur-based ignitable materials, yet they suggest this might be over-cautious: “The chemicals in the flammable tip may suffer natural degradation through natural aging, but it is probably unlikely that a match of this mid-twentieth-century vintage may spontaneously combust. Where loose early matches of the pre-safety match era may rattle around and cause friction enough to ignite the flammable head, it is unlikely that a set of twentieth-century wooden or paperboard strip matches would move enough to spark an ignition.”

I looked into what the National Fire Protection Agency had to say about spontaneous combustion, and there was no mention of matches.  The official statement says: “Spontaneous combustion is a byproduct of spontaneous heating, which occurs when a material increases in temperature without drawing heat from its surroundings. If the material reaches its ignition temperature, spontaneous ignition or combustion occurs. Examples of materials that are prone to spontaneous combustion include: oily rags, hay, and other agricultural products.”

When both sets of brand new, never opened matches flared up over my heart, I was sitting still, and had been for awhile. The weather was a cool Florida fall day, and I’d kept my long-sleeved shirt on from morning to night. I have a low natural body temperature, the type where the thermometer reads 97 instead of 98. There was no external heat source and no friction. I was beginning to wish I had kept the old matchbooks. I’ve lost them by now after dozens of moves, but maybe I could have made a few bucks on eBay — maybe the expert phillumenists would have been interested. Or I wish we had, at least, consulted with the chemistry professors on campus, for it seems we had a genuinely unusual event on our hands. 

After more internet searching, I finally found a genuine reference to exploding matches, and it was in the most unlikely place — a discussion board for Catholics. This was an old-style discussion board organized by deeply religious people looking for online company. It was ten years old, but Google found it, because they were talking about my topic.  A thread of folks were chatting in response to a friendly question: Do you have a collection of things? Are you a collector? Dolls and stamps were the theme, but one poster, named LimaBean, collected matchbooks. LimaBean shared that when he or she was feeling down and lonely, they would take out the collection and re-live good memories.  And then . . .

“One evening, I had my matchbooks scattered all over my carpet. I was looking at them and reminiscing about the places I have been to (restaurants, hotels from vacation, jazz clubs, etc.) While enjoying my collection, one of the matchbooks spontaneously combusted, while on the carpet!!! I had to act quickly and put out the fire.” 

Laying out matchbooks on the floor, somewhat like tarot cards, and one of them bursts into flames, while thinking about it? With strong, melancholy feelings? That's crazy! Did the folks on the discussion board take this as a sign or a miracle? I certainly would have, and I bet my cousin would have, too. But poor LimaBean was left alone with this alarming experience, just another unexplained moment in life. No one acknowledged that this was odd, there was no chorus banging the drums of surprise, what-in-tarnation-was-that!  Matches that blow up in bars and parties get lots of attention, but not in Catholic discussion groups. No one even asked about the memory behind that flaming matchbook,  I wonder what happened for poor LimaBean at that hotel, that jazz club. . . .   

So there it is, a third matchbook up in flames, just sitting there. It is still a mystery how this could happen, even with Google, and if there is a theme between an old drunk’s overcoat, a ratty old shirt pocket, and the carpet of a devout Catholic, I don’t know what it is. 

One last piece to this story —  I was at a hotel last year, a super-hip, luxurious spa hotel in Florida, reconnecting and celebrating with the only college friend I’m still close with, and at the checkout counter, I saw a box of brand new matchbooks. Very retro, very hip. I wanted something to remember the amazing weekend by, so I popped two of them in my left breast pocket — without a single thought to the last time I had done such a thing, not even a faint echo of what could happen. It wasn't until weeks later that a distant memory clicked and it struck me - I had two unopened matchbooks from Florida somewhere in my possession. With alarm, I rushed upstairs and found them sitting in a pile on my desk. For now,  I’m going to keep them off my body and be very careful the next time I sing, and especially when I think about that wonderful weekend at the spa. Or I might just turn down the lights, set them out in front of me on the carpet,  get real focused, and see what happens . . . .