OPINION

Mullis: Reading the crumbs of an empty fortune cookie

Nicole L.V. Mullis
For the Enquirer

I love Chinese carryout – the sticky rice, the savory sauces, the stir-fried meats. I even like the fortune cookie, although it is the world’s worst dessert.

Nicole L.V. Mullis

Desserts should be decadent, rich and sweet. A fortune cookie is dry, dusty and dull. Its major ingredients are flour and water, which might be why it tastes like paste.

The slightly less-edible piece of paper inside is the reason I enjoy them. It predicts my future, teaches me Chinese and contains my lucky numbers, which is a decent way to end dinner.

My family has a ritual when eating Chinese carryout. First, we gorge on dinner, shoving aside the complimentary cookies and extra soy sauce packets. Gorging complete, each family member selects a cookie. One by one, we crack open the stale shells and read our futures.

Even though we know it's sheer nonsense, we love to divine the “true” meaning of each fortune based on the one holding the shell. Teasing is not only tolerated but encouraged.

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We list aloud the lucky numbers, intrigued when they match significant dates, our ages, the mileage on the car. We eat the crumbly cookie in which these fortunes came, as if they were a fortune delivery system. And, if the fortune is particularly noteworthy, we put it on the fridge.

Most of the time, the fortunes are banal generalities. “You are destined to do great things.” Sometimes, they are random, like the cookie that told my son, “All your rubber bands are pointing in the right directions.”

That one made the fridge.

Recently, we gorged on Chinese carryout. Plucking the cookies from their soy-sauce pile, we read our fortunes. My husband’s cookie said he would receive a promotion. I congratulated him, asking if his lucky numbers spelled out his future raise, and opened my cookie.

Nothing.

There was a piece of paper inside, but it was completely blank. No predictions, no lucky numbers, no Chinese word for cow.

Now I might not hold with such things, but receiving a blank fortune made me feel very unfortunate.

Was the universe trying to tell me something?

I showed it to my family, sure their teasing would banish my dread. Instead, my oldest shook her head.

“That’s not good.”

That's not helping.

I carried the paper to the kitchen, mindlessly munching my nasty cookie. It was just a silly thing, a manufacturing mistake, but I couldn’t help thinking about things that weren’t going well in my life – stalled projects, failures, dead ends.

How did this cookie know I’ve been struggling with my purpose right now? Did it see me stress-eating the Crab Rangoon?

Stupid cookie.

Then, hope floated to the top. What if the cookie wanted to tell me I had a fresh start, that I could write my own future, make my own luck?

That was far more encouraging.

Then, I took it a step further. What if the future isn’t for us to know because we never do well when we know what’s going to happen. We never do well when we rely on “lucky numbers” either. Maybe that cookie wanted me to live in the now ...

… or maybe I ate too much Crab Rangoon.

I didn’t keep the paper, but I won’t forget it. It might be the only honest fortune I've received.

Nicole L.V. Mullis is the author of the novel "A Teacher Named Faith." She can be reached at nlvm.columns@gmail.com or www.NicoleLVMullis.com