A Fortune Cookie Comes True [FICTOID]

“Do I believe in numerology?  No, nor do I believe in geomancy, thaumaturgy, scryving, oneiromancy, tasseomancy, necromancy, spiritualism, the tarot, the I Ching, astrology, or any other recycled garbage.  

“Our fates are written in our thoughts and words and deeds, not the stars.

“But I do believe in fortune cookies.

“Oh, you find that hilarious, do you?  Let me tell you a story:

“We’d just finished working on our revisions of the Sanskrit-English dictionary and went out for a spot of dinner.

“We chose a local Chinese restaurant simply for its nearby convenience -- I would have preferred the Italian restaurant further down the street (love their breadsticks).

“When we finished, the waitress brought our fortune cookies -- she’s Italian-American, by the way, the daughter of the couple who own the Italian restaurant but she married into the Chinese family who ran that restaurant so there she was.

“We all cracked open our cookies on the count of three (at the time, I thought it superstitious nonsense but wasn’t going to spoil my co-workers’ fun) then read them aloud.

“Lawrence read, ‘Your work is meaningful’ and we all chuckled at that (after all, we were working on a dictionary).

“Then Cheryl read hers:  ‘You will end with your origin’ and that was funny, too, since Cheryl is the team etymologist.

‘Then I read mine and all it said was ‘Duck’.

“I passed it to the others.  ‘Whatever does that mean?’ Lawrence asked.

“’Probably advertising next week’s special,’ Cheryl said with a laugh.  She handed the fortune back to me but it slipped from her fingers and fluttered to the floor and as I bent over the retrieve it -- CRASH! -- a big steel beam strapped to the back of a truck with faulty brakes came right through the brick wall where my head had been.

“So, yes, I believe in fortune cookies.  Here, have another.”

© Buzz Dixon