xv

“Confucius say: Take out fortune before eating the cookie.”

                -Confucius (citation needed)

It is a Friday night and I am eating a late dinner at the new Chinese restaurant that opened up in the old Chinese shopping center. The soy-sauce and red-pepper hybrid from my meal still lurks in the corners of my rawed mouth and I can’t wait to leave. Signaling through my spiced tears to my Buddha-faced waitress, the illegibly scrawled character check comes.

Without a fortune cookie.

I have never been more upset, never been more Won-Ton-boiling-mad in my short eighteen-year-old-life.

            Without this hard, stale pastry of magic, how will I know how to live my pathetic life? It is impossible to survive unless I have the words of Wise Mystic #15, who crouches at the decades-old typewriter whose sole purpose in life is to guide me.

I can only imagine that it is early morning where is works, where he is being paid below minimum wage across the Asian-Zing brine of the Pacific Ocean, where he twirls his spiny fingers through his Everest beard, pulling words out of the well-worn dictionary and gently placing them onto laid-out thin red-lettered strips of paper.

But these red letters do not, cannot give me the comfort that I am promised with the opening of the plastic baggie.

All I am asking for is just one fortune cookie that says something along the lines of “Hello young one. Live your life according to these three easy steps and you will have great success in each and every aspect of your life. Domo arigato. ”

Is this so difficult, over-seas-fortune-cookie-company-CEO, employer of the Miyagi-typewriter-scribe? Do some research, find out my psychological insecurities, and guide my tomorrow, my week, my year. Lead the way to my ginger-bread destiny. I promise that I will follow your cookie crumbs through to the ends of the forests of soy-sauce-stained-napkins.

After I pay the check.