stevelam.org

I don’t usually pay much attention to those silly fortune cookie messages. Occasionally I will come across one that would make me ponder. What follows below are two of them.

January 1999

I was at the Denver airport, halfway home from bootcamp. I ordered a combo meal from Panda Express and with it came this fortune cookie. It contained a very intriguing message:

You do not realize the impact you have on others.

I didn’t think I made much of a difference in anyone’s life. It made me think about my life and the great people who come into it. There I realized that I do make a difference, and it made me grin.

Feburary 2000

I was at Minneapolis visiting my relatives. My cousin invited us to dinner at this chinese seafood restaurant. After dinner, they passed out fortune cookies. Mine contained this strange message:

A surprise announcement will set you free.

I scratched my head wondered: Am I going to win a million dollars? The cookie’s magic didn’t work until a week later.

Here I was at Minnesota with nothing to do but channeling surf. I was sick of the Mall of America after going there 6 times in the past 4 days. Finally, I asked my cousin, on his day off, to take me snowboarding. He called his friends, and it turns out that they were going later tonight. Eureka! That was my surprise announcement? Nope.

As we were getting ready, the phone rang. It was from my cousin Krista, she said that there were some empty seats on a flight leaving out tonight. If I wanted to go home soon, I would have to take this flight, otherwise who knows when the next open flight will be. So I took it, free at last!