Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Congratulations on Choosing the Third One From the Left!

The way you crack open your fortune cookies at Panda Café is nigh ritualistic. The peeling of the plastic, the gentle tension of the cookie as it collapses and the way you set the crumbs on your plate and unfold the paper, it’s almost a religion. Most of the missives you get involve mistranslations or misprints of Confuscian philosophies with all their context stripped away. But occasionally you find something inexplicably odd, like “Stand next to the woman with red hair” or “Avoid dogs” and it turns out to be somewhat relevant. That’s why when you see the relevant fortune, a few days earlier on March 3rd, after finishing your Lo Mien, you’ll fold it up gingerly and put it in your pants pocket.

When this Wednesday rolls around you won’t even remember having deposited it there. You’ll just be sifting through your pockets as the sand drizzles out of the hourglass. The gypsy will be laughing her horrible, horrible laugh and you’ll be baffled as to which one of the doors doesn’t contain a lion. When you withdraw the paper and read it once more you’ll know right away.

You’ll stride up to the correct door and the gypsy will stop laughing just as you enter. When you emerge clutching the treasure chest filled with her gold her smile will have vanished completely and she’ll be grinding her teeth, the sound clear from across the room.

“Leave,” she’ll say, and you’ll nod politely and do so, because being rude to gypsies you’ve just bested is generally a poor idea.

Congratulations on Choosing the Third One From the Left!

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