Carey and I were both off today so we went to the China Buffet in South Plainfield for lunch.   It’s a real bargain – three buffet lines for $5.99 for lunch and the food is delicious as well.   At the end of the meal, I grabbed a fortune cookie for each of us, handed Carey’s to him, and opened mine, expecting to learn the secrets of what the summer would hold for me.  Instead, I opened an empty cookie.  There was no fortune.   I felt a cold shadow pass over me – did no fortune mean no future?  Carey kindly offered his fortune “Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier” but by the rules of Chinese fortune cookies once the cookies have been dealt the die is cast.   Besides, even with the utmost optimism to multiply my fortune,  anything times zero would still be zero.

I have decided to interpret my lack of fortune in a different way from the gloomy thoughts I had at first.   No fortune means that my future, my summer,  my year, are up to me to make them what they will be.  So maybe I will take Carey’s fortune after all and use optimism to multiply the plans I make to create a future far better than any fortune cookie could foretell.