I have a very large collection of fortune cookie fortunes. You know, those little pieces of paper with a witty / wise saying on them that come in a little bent cookie that you get after eating at a Chinese restaurant. I don’t now exactly why I started collecting them. It just seemed like a good idea at the time, back in my teens.
This works out well for me now, especially since the wife has taken up snacking on fortune cookies. She eats them, then gives me the fortunes. It helps increase my collection and makes me happy. Win win.
Side note: fortune cookies were invented by Japanese immigrants to America in the early 1900s. The immigrants settled in California. They were inspired by crackers made at Kyoto temples. The Japanese Tea Garden restaurant served them as thanks for friends and family. When World War II rolled around, Japanese citizens were put in internment camps, so the Chinese stepped in, taking over manufacture of the cookies and serving them in Chinese restaurants. After American soldiers got home from WWII, they started requesting the cookies at Chinese restaurants. The rest, as they say, is history.
Anyway, I got a fortune one time that read “Play the lottery today. Lady luck is upon you.”
Now I play the lottery every now and again. Usually when it starts getting lose to the $1 billion mark. It just so happened to be getting close to that mark when I got the fortune. I figured hey, the Universe can’t send you a clearer message than that. I went ahead and bought a ticket. The drawing wasn’t going to be held until Tuesday evening, but I’m nothing if not patient.
Tuesday rolled around, I got busy, and didn’t pay attention to the lottery drawing. I was driving the next day and heard on the radio that someone somewhere had won the grand jackpot. A brief moment of hope that it might have been me flashed through my mind. I didn’t really expect it but it was nice to dream about it.
When I got home later, I checked my email. As I was scrolling through the subject lines I saw this one – “Your winnings have arrived!”.
Another brief moment of hope went through me. I didn’t really think I’d won the grand jackpot, but I thought something like winning $100,000 might be nice.
I opened the email.
“Congratulations on your win!”
This was promising.
I soon got to the amount I’d won. I won enough to pay for the ticket I’d bought to play.
Well, the fortune cookie was right. Lady luck was upon me. It would have been nice to have won a bigger jackpot, but hey, not losing any money is A Good Thing ™.
I guess the moral of the story, my Hordeling, is when you get a fortune cookie fortune telling you to play the lottery, pay attention and act on it! If you get my results, at least you won’t lose anything. Maybe you’ll do better.
If you’d like to support my efforts, why not buy me a chocolate chip cookie through my Ko-Fi page? https://ko-fi.com/jhusum