Bad fortune

In an attempt to provide a creative and profound visual at a meeting, I decided to purchase fortune cookies for distribution. People love fortune cookies. Specifically, American people. Yes, That’s Not Chinese, the fortune cookie may not, in fact, be Chinese, or Japanese, for that matter. The fortune cookie may actually be Californianese. Regardless of origin, the cookies are best known for their messages of fortune.

Knowing this, and knowing that most people expect this, I thought removing the fortune, and either leaving the cookie empty or replacing it with a misfortune, would create a great learning experience. I stopped at the Oriental Market to pick up a bag of cookies – kind of ironic considering the cookies are made in America – and asked the cashier, an Asian woman, if they ever sell empty fortune cookies. “Why you want bad fortune?” she asked me. She then shared what I believe may be an ancient Chinese secret, “Put in microwave for a few seconds, make fortune easy to come out.”

I typed up some misfortunes, giggled when I thought about people’s responses and how much more unfortunate they would be if they added ‘in bed’ at the end, then popped a cookie in the microwave. Unfortunately, pun intended, although this did soften the cookie a bit, the cookie wasn’t soft enough to easily remove the good fortune, replace with a bad fortune, and close. This task ended up being way too much work for me, one might surmise that is my bad fortune. So, instead of using the cookies for my presentation, I decided to place them on my desk for passersby to ‘enjoy.’ For the person who selects, “There will soon be a lien on your house,” it could be worse. I know, I wrote the ‘fortunes.’