From the author to the reader:  Show-and-Tell was the very best part of school for me, both as a student and as a teacher. As a kid, I put more into getting ready for my turn to present than I put into the rest of my homework. Show-and-Tell was real  in a way that much of what I learned in school was not. It was education that came out of my life experience. As a teacher, I was always surprised by what I learned from these amateur hours. A kid I was sure I knew well would reach down into a paper bag he carried and fish out some odd-shaped treasure and attach meaning to it beyond my most extravagant expectation.  Again and again I learned that what I thought was only true for me . . . only valued by me . . . only cared about by me . . . was common property. The principles guiding this book are not far from the spirit of Show-and-Tell. It is stuff from home—that place in my mind and heart where I most truly live. P.S. This volume picks up where I left off in All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, when I promised to tell about the time it was on fire when I lay down on it. phenomenal best-seller, EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN, Robert Fulghum reminded readers everywhere of some plain and still-true truths. Now, picking up where he left off, Fulghum turns our eyes to show-and-tell, weddings, his own ten commandments, and more insightful and unique observations on what our world is and was.... phenomenal best-seller, EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN, Robert Fulghum reminded readers everywhere of some plain and still-true truths. Now, picking up where he left off, Fulghum turns our eyes to show-and-tell, weddings, his own ten commandments, and more insightful and unique observations on what our world is and was.... Robert Fulghum is a writer, philosopher, and public speaker, but he has also worked as a cowboy, a folksinger, an IBM salesman, a professional artist, a parish minister, a bartender, a teacher of drawing and painting, and a father. All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten has inspired numerous theater pieces that have captivated audiences across the country. Fulghum is also the author of many New York Times bestsellers, including It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It, Uh-Oh, and Maybe (Maybe Not) , as well as two plays: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten and Uh-Oh, Here Comes Christmas. He has also written two novels: Third Wish and If You Love Me Still, Will You Love Me Moving? A TABLOID NEWSPAPER CARRIED THE STORY, stating simply that a small-town emergency squad was summoned to a house where smoke was pouring from an upstairs window. The crew broke in and found a man in a smoldering bed. After the man was rescued and the mattress doused, the obvious question was asked: “How did this happen?”   “I don’t know. It was on fire when I lay down on it.”   The story stuck like a burr to my mental socks. And reminded me of a phrase copied into my journal from the dedication of some book: “Quid rides? Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur.” Latin. From the writings of Horace. Translated: “Why do you laugh? Change the name, and the story is told of you.”   It was on fire when I lay down on it.   A lot of us could settle for that on our tombstones. A life-story in a sentence. Out of the frying pan and into the hot water. I was looking for trouble and got into it as soon as I found it. The devil made me do it the first time, and after that I did it on my own.   Or to point at this truth at a less intense level, I report a conversation with a colleague who was complaining that he had the same damn stuff in his lunch sack day after day.   “So who makes your lunch?” I asked.   “I do,” says he.   We’ve got some fine old company in this deal.   Saint Paul bemoaned the fact that “I cannot understand my own behavior. I fail to carry out the things I want to do, and I find myself doing the very things I hate.”   And the Greek dramatist Euripides puts these words in Medea’s mouth just before she murders her own children: “I know what evil I am about to do. My irrational self is stronger than my resolution.”   Psychiatrists make a lot of money off this dilemma, and theologians make a lot of noise. But not only is it unresolved, it is unresolvable. One lives with the dilemma, and in the living takes comfort in the company of those who habitually lie down on burning beds of one kind or another. It would be better if we could simply lay claim to the beds we choose as our own and get on with it.   And one more thing.   About the man in the burning bed in the story. As with most of what we see other people do, we don’t know why they do it, either. If our own actions are mysteries, how much so others’? Why did he lie down on the burning bed? Was he drunk? Ill? Suicidal? Blind? Cold? Dumb? Did he just have a weird sense of humor? Or what? I don’t know. It’s hard to judge without a lot more information