“Only you,” my husband said, “would trade a shoe for a book.”
“What’s worth more?” I asked, “Maimonides, or some old shoe?”
I knew that I had the better of the argument, and my husband would understand. After all, our first date had been a trip to a bookstore. But he just shrugged and sighed. Where had my book-loving husband gone?
“You’ve changed,” I said.
“It’s not that you have a book instead of a shoe,” he said, “It’s that you never remember making the trade. You’ve changed.”
It’s true that I sometimes head to the kitchen hoping to get a chocolate éclair from the freezer and return holding a small frog. I don’t know how the frog got into the kitchen. I just know that it’s something new, and interesting enough to make me forget the chocolate éclair. My husband should be glad that I can be distracted by a frog in the kitchen. Certainly, my waistline thanks me.
And I still have my wits about me. To prove it, when we returned home, I sat on the couch, opened Guide for the Perplexed, and started to read. I was, after all, perplexed, and could use a guide.
Author's Comment
I woke from dreaming of the images in the first sentence of this story, and knew I had to elaborate – but just a little bit.
Lynn Gazis grew up in the suburbs of New York City, spent her young adulthood in the San Francisco Bay Area, and now lives in Southern California. She has worked for around 40 years in IT. More recently, she has started writing short fiction. Her stories have been published by Cathedral Canyon Review, Air and Nothingness Press, and Friends Journal. 
As an artist, musician and poet, Donna Bauman says, “my life has been all about being a seeker, asking questions, exploring, creating. As a creator of beauty, I feel inspired to radiate as much of the feminine spirit as possible. I am here to bring inspiration into form. My desire is that my creations will enter into people’s lives in an inspiring and transforming way.”