Thursday, April 22, 2010

Fortune

A word on fortunes; as in, from fortune cookies: I love them. Ok that was three words, but I planned to say more anyway. Somehow when I was younger, without even noticing, I had amassed a good pile of them, saved from as long as I can remember. I put them all in a Coke bottle around 1995, and have kept every single one I've gotten since. And they can only be mine (a fact which I myself didn't realize until someone offered to give me his...and I rejected it... bluntly). It's like some strange obsession. They are crunched into the bottle, but there's plenty of room left for all the ones I will get in the future. There are even a couple that went through the wash in my jeans pocket (the little pocket is the designated fortune-holder...I always check it before washing jeans).

Never having given this much thought to my fortune collection, it seems I have some very specific behaviors regarding them that I never put together before--worth noting should I ever need therapy.



But of all these fortunes, I have never seen this*:


A website. What? Since when do ancient Chinese fortune tellers have websites?? So I went there: if I entered my email, zip, gender, and birthday I would get a personalized fortune. I looks legit, like it's the website of the cookie company, but still...I don't usually give out my email that easily.

And, there's a coinciding book, found at a used book sale:

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, Jennifer 8. Lee (the 8 being a Chinese-symbolic-thing)

The writer was promoting the book on the Colbert Report, so it HAS to be good, right??? (so far, it is) And, she seems to be as obsessive about Chinese food as I am about fortunes, so it's really a match made in heaven! In it, she chronicles the history of Chinese food in general and specifically the cookie fortunes that led 110 people to win the Powerball lottery in one day, picking numbers from a fortune...every single one having come from a Chinese restaurant. It's really nice to lend some legitimacy to my bizarre behaviors!

A bird visited us again. I wonder what that means for our fortune?

*After photographing, this fortune went straight into the bottle.

4 comments:

Karen M. said...

That birdie is so cute :)

maria said...

Some people keep 'Time in a bottle'

Emily said...

Hmm this is very interesting. I think I might start doing the same thing. I can't believe you've been doing this since 1995.

When I was little, I would write notes on a piece of paper, place them in an empty Altoids tin, and stick it in this hole in a tree at my grandparents farm.

ardie said...

ohh neat, like a time capsule!