I got a fortune cookie the other day that wasn’t really a fortune, but more like advice. This happens to me sometimes. The best fortunes, in my opinion, predict the future, as a good cookie should. But more often than not, I end up with a platitude. “Good things come to those who wait.” Yeah, I want to say, but are good things coming my way or what? When, cookie, when?!
This is what I got:
All right, I thought. I’ll get right on that. I kept the fortune for posterity but I didn’t, you know, do anything with my loose ends.
Next time I had Chinese, I got this:
Oh, God, cookie, I don’t know! I looked over my shoulder for my problem, was it here in the restaurant? An assassin of some sort?
Tell us, renowned 12apostrophes readers, your disconcerting fortune cookie stories.
p.s. Everyone knows that to have good luck, you have to save your fortune cookie until the end of the meal. The very end, mind you. Pick your fill of sesame chicken from the lettuce on your plate before you crack open that fortune and taste the cookie, because there’s no turning back after that, or else you’ll have bad luck. Or a bossy fortune cookie.
7 Responses to Misfortune Cookie
Wow, that’s ominous. Maybe you should have tied those loose ends when the fortune cookies were still talking of things in terms of beauty and bows.
If all fortune cookies actually just told the future, we wouldn’t have “fortune-cookie wisdom” in popular parlance would we? I think the Reader’s-Digest-lite-level of platitudes and wisdom is definitely to be expected.
Having said that, years of chinese-restaurant frequenting have given me some interesting results in the fortune-cookie arena. The best one was the one that read “Somebody is watching you.” I never found out who, I never knew why, but damn if that cookie didn’t make me watch everyone in the restaurant very closely for a while (fortune cookie+ice cream= 15 minutes of people watching). Come to think of it, what if everyone got the same cookie? Devious way of engineering accuracy…
I got the best fortune/platitude EVER when I was out with Pulao and Kris recently. Please wait for me, I’ll post it! After work today. Snore….
Got it!
“First they ignore you, then they attack you, then you win.”
Best. Fortune. Cookie. Ever.
“You have to forgive that person. Just believe me.”
dbay’s is the best one ever, still.
That’s true, it happened to me. They ignored me, attacked me, then I won, and then I forgave them. I mean, I already won, why not let bygones be bygones?
Last night I got another funny fortune, I swear to God I’m not making this up: “Friends are like passengers on the bus, they get on and off.”
You don’t even have to add “in bed.” It’s too easy!
“Your deepest desire shall be fulfilled”
A couple of days later I managed to buy volumes I&II of “52” at a Bandra bookshop. Makes me wonder if I have my priorities right…