Fortune Cookie

I may not look like it, but I love my food. It was weird because when I was an infant, I’d eat anything. Then when I was a child, I had a small variety of what I’d eat. Nowadays, I eat more of a variety. The one type of food I’m not a fan of is Asian food. The main reason I go to Chinese restaurants is because they have fortune cookies. Everyone should love fortune cookies.

(Scribblage.com)

It’s not necessarily the cookie itself, but I love getting the fortune. It’s always fun receiving one of those magical sayings predicting your uncertain future. If you’re with your friends, you all are trying to switch fortunes to get the best one or you try to get the fortune that has your favorite number(s). Where did the fortune cookie come from and why do we love it?

The person who claims to make the fortune cookie is David Jung. He’s a Chinese immigrant who founded the Hong Kong Noodle Co. in 1918 Los Angeles, California. When he made these fortunes, he gave them out for free to homeless people out on the streets. That’s why every fortune is always a good one. There’s never been a bad fortune cookie, except for the people who make them on the internet.

To better explain the internet phenomenon, here’s the basics. On the internet, we see how people will take the body of Superman and take a picture of their own head. Place it on Superman’s body and make it seem like they’re that strong and are secretly Superman. This concept is used on pictures on the internet with fortune cookies. For example, let's say that a person goes on the internet to look up some fortune cookies for some reason. On some websites, they’ll notice that some of the fortune cookie sayings are not “as nice as” real fortune cookie sayings. Instead of one saying, “You’re beautiful and you have much to give to the world” it’ll say, “You’re worthless, go hide in a ditch and never come again.”

(buzzle.com)

The fortune cookie didn’t always look like how we see them today. They used to be somehow used with chopsticks. We can thank Edward Louie who was the founder of the Fortune Cookie Company and made the fortune cookie into the classical curve as we know it today.

Here’s the problem: you can only get these fortune cookies at Chinese restaurants or at certain grocery stores. You can’t walk into McDonald's and request a fortune cookie with your meal. I think you should be able to request one. Fortune cookies are there to make people feel better or have that extra boost to make their day that much better.

Let me describe a scenario. Let’s say your school day doesn’t go as well as other days. You get home and something bad happens (your partner breaks up with you, you two get into a nasty fight, maybe one of your friends does something, etc). There’s several things you can do to cheer yourself up. One of those is go to your favorite restaurant. Now why do we go to our favorite restaurant? When we’re sad, angry, confused, etc, we look for something to cheer ourselves up (after the stage of cooling down over what happened). Even just a simple thing, such as enjoying your favorite food, will make you happy.

Now imagine, a fortune cookie is always filled with a good fortune. So wouldn’t it be that much better if you could go to your favorite restaurant, even with it not being a Chinese restaurant, and get a fortune cookie that could make you feel that much better? I know it’d make me feel better. Sometimes it’s the little things that can make our bad day have a good boost. Sometimes we forget how the little things can make our day, getting a hug, getting that one person to make you laugh, have your favorite song come on the radio, and of course the fortune cookie that says, “You’re in a tunnel right now, to every tunnel, there’s a beginning and an exit. You have the strength to keep going to the exit and reach the light.”

There’s a way to try to convince other stores to start having fortune cookies. What I’m going to do is start buying boxes of fortune cookies and go to several different restaurants and give each a box and tell them to freely give each customer a fortune cookie and do that numerous times and hope that eventually the restaurants will start buying them instead of me having to provide it to them. I know that at least some restaurants would have to buy into it when customers are surprised by receiving a fortune cookie. I only hope that during one of those times, (I don’t want anybody sad, angry, etc) someone who’s having a bad day goes to their restaurant and after they have their favorite meal and before they leave, they get a fortune cookie that makes their day and gets them into a better mood.