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An older gentleman enters a leatherworker's shop, and asks, "Do you make custom wallets?"

"Yes, sir." The leatherworker says. "What kind would you like?"

"Well, this is a little strange. I just retired...."

"Congratulations! This is your retirement present to yourself, I take it?" The leatherworker says.

"Yes, it is. I spent thirty years working as a mohel [performer of ritual circumcisions]. I had one odd habit, though: I have saved every foreskin that I ever circumcised." He lays a small box on the counter. The leatherworker's jaw drops.

"You don't mean that's...."

"That's all of them, yes. I want you to make them into a wallet for me." The mohel says.

"Oh, I don't think so!" The leatherworker and the mohel argue back and forth a bit, but finally, the mohel says,

"I'll pay you a thousand dollars." The leatherworker is taken aback-- that's five times his usual fee. He takes a deep breath and shrugs.

"Okay. Give me three weeks." The mohel nods, smiles, and leaves the store.

Three weeks later, the mohel returns.

"Well?" He asks.

The leatherworker unwraps a glossy new wallet.

"That will be five thousand dollars." The leatherworker says.

"Five thousand! We agreed on one thousand! Why should I pay you five thousand dollars for a wallet?!!"

"Where else in the world are you going to get a wallet that turns into a suitcase when you rub it?"

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)