When she was a little girl, Zelda prayed for a magic wooden box. Inside that magic box was a one-dollar bill that replaced itself whenever she took it out. Open the box, take the dollar out, close the lid, open the box, take the dollar out, close the lid… Zelda fantasized about the magic box when she was bored in school. At night, after her prayers, thinking about the magic box helped her fall asleep. She counted dollar bills instead of sheep, and fantasized about ordering a cheeseburger with fries and a cherry Coke at Gordon’s Cafe.

Every night at the dinner table, Zelda’s mom announced how much of everything each person in the family could eat: You can have one piece of chicken, a scoop of potatoes, and two pieces of bread. With a magic-dollar-bill-producing box, Zelda thought, there would be money to buy more food and she wouldn’t be so hungry all the time.

Whenever she asked for anything, the adults in Zelda’s family said things like, Money doesn’t grow on trees, ya know! And, Do you think I’m made out of money!? But at church every Sunday morning, when the offering plate was passed, they all put money into it. Zelda watched that plate of money come toward her, trying to figure out how to take some without getting caught. She knew it was the devil tempting her to break one of the Ten Commandments, but she couldn’t help it.

Zelda was discouraged and angry by the time she was a teenager, because in spite of more than a decade of fervent prayers, the magic box had never appeared. So much for “Ask and ye shall receive,” she thought.

When Zelda got her first job and left home, she quit religion. But getting rid of the devil and God, she found out, was like trying to flick a booger off your finger. Just when you think they’re gone, there they are, telling you you’ve done the wrong thing — again. You say, No! I’m a good person doing the best I can, and say, get thee behind me. But they don’t listen. They follow you everywhere, yelling about how bad you are.

Religion is nothing but a bunch of magic stories, Zelda thought during the defining moment of her twenties. In fact, if the Bible had been written after dollar bills were invented, a story about a magic box that helped feed hungry children might have been in it.