THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 12, 1995 TAG: 9505120050
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Jennifer Dziura
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
THE FORTUNE COOKIE is a clever little invention in which a folded cookie is impregnated with a tiny strip of paper, dubbed ``the fortune.''
You see, while many children were busy amassing collections of baseball cards or seashells, I have saved every fortune from every fortune cookie I've ever eaten. A methodical survey of these leads me to conclude that the little paper strips invariably fall into four categories:
1) Advice. I believe that this particular species of fortune is composed by stymied advice-column writers who were oppressed by the Ann Landers/Dear Abby monopoly and by authoritarian parents who forced them into the family fortune cookie business. For example, a fortune I extracted from a cookie in 1988 reads ``Consulte con otros para la solucion del problema.'' Fortunately, the other side reads ``Consult with others for the solution of the problem.''
It is obvious that type 1 fortunes aren't really fortunes at all, in which case the confectionery in question would be more accurately referred to as ``advice cookies.''
2) Personal revelations. These tidbits of psychic probing offer psychoanalysis for the modest price of a cookie. ``You are sociable and entertaining,'' reads one.
A fortune I received in 1984 reads ``You are just beginning to live.'' That one was unusually accurate; I was 6 at the time. Of course, type 2 fortunes aren't really fortunes at all; their respective dessert items could more accurately be called ``personality analysis cookie,'' or ``Freud cookies'' for short.
3) Proverbs. I was once informed by my dessert that ``The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.'' Now, occasionally, the average serf or peasant takes a break from his miserable little life for a second to say ``Yeah, fine, the world is a sphere. So what?''
But this doesn't often happen. For example, philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote ``We commonly assume that there is a phenomenon which we call seeing the chair, but what I call my seeing the chair according to neutral monism is merely the existence of a certain particular, namely the particular which is the sense-datum of that chair at that moment. And I and the chair are both logical fictions. . . .'' That may or may not be true, but I don't foresee that (or the rest of the age-old debate about whether you, I, and Bertrand Russell's chair exist) becoming common sense any time in the near future.
Type 3 cookie contents, even if correct, are not fortunes. They are ``proverb cookies,'' easily distinguished from type 2 and type 3 cookie contents in that they frequently begin ``Confucius says. . . ''
4) Actual fortunes. While type four cookie contents are the only ones worthy of the name ``fortunes,'' they often resemble the horoscopes in bad teen magazines - they're hazy and vague, and they always predict good events to come.
A fortune extracted from a cookie in 1991 reads ``Your life will be happy and peaceful,'' and the sentence is punctuated with happy faces at both ends. Another forecasts ``All your hard work will soon pay off.''
Maureen Thorson, a junior at Cox High School, was scrutinizing my fortune collection recently. ``You never get a bad fortune,'' she observed. ``I want to find a fortune cookie that says `You will die tomorrow at 3:00 p.m.' ''
But who wants to find a bad omen in dessert? After all, that would be detrimental to the fortune cookie business. But I'm going to stop worrying about it. After all, Confucius insists that my life will be happy and peaceful. by CNB