How the Fortune Cookie Crumbles

Today for lunch I, against my will, ended up at the Chinese buffet. I despise a buffet, with all those bodies jostling for food with heat-lamp skim over the top. Total strangers touching serving spoons and ducking below the sneeze guard glass to get a better breath on what they're scooping in large portions onto their plates. Restaurant workers assigned to scrape the last gooey dregs of emperor's surprise from a metal server and slap the spoonful into a freshly prepared replacement tray, ruining the triumph of getting to it first.

And that only touches the surface of how I truly feel about buffets.

But at least at the Chinese buffet, the ordeal ends with the suspense and adventure of a fortune cookie. The waitress put a handful of five in the center of our table. I have this belief that fate guides my choice of which cookie to open. So I usually look at the pile of cookies trying to listen to my gut tell me which one is meant to be mine. Today, my gut was bound up in unspeakable gastric processes and was slow to pull the trigger. I ended up with the cookie no one else chose. That's fate at work too I suppose.

I cracked the hard shell of cookie to reveal the white slip of paper within. Placing the shards aside - I don't eat those, but won't bore you with the long explanation of that - I spread the paper in my fingertips. Lottery numbers and a Spanish translation of my fortune. Hmp.

I turned it over to read the other side. It said, "Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today."

What? That's it? Fate delivers this to me? I don't need to go to a Chinese restaurant for this, I think. Then it hits me, holy crap! My mother is writing fortune cookies now.

I tore off a piece of my napkin in a small rectangle and wrote on it, then slid it amongst the cookie pieces. It said, "Please tell my mother I want a fortune, not advice."