Cooking with Kids: Funny Fortunes
Did you know you can commission custom fortune cookies for a gag gift or fundraiser? My friend’s son’s elementary school did it. Who do you think can write better fortunes, professional cookie scribes or a bunch of kids?
If you guessed “a bunch of kids,” you’re right. Here are some actual fortunes they wrote.
A big whale falls from the sky and squashed you until you’re pretty much dead. Not completely dead, but pretty much.
I hate it when that happens, but it’s nothing compared to this debacle:
In five minutes, you will be attacked by a pear. It will eat you because you were going to eat it.
In the immortal words of Shakespeare: Exit, pursued by a pear.
But nothing prepared me for my own personal fortune, which was written by a first-grade girl who has probably already gone on to write a bestselling series of horror novels.
There’s a lake with a unicorn sitting in short grass. The unicorn will sleep; you will get dragged deep in the forest.
Zen Buddhist horror novels, I mean.
Not every fortune was genius. My wife got one that just said:
You are a donkey.
To keep this food-related, I should say that the cookies themselves were pretty stale. According to my daughter, they “tasted stupid.” Which sounds like the sort of thing a six-year-old would write for a fortune cookie.
About the author: Matthew Amster-Burton lives in Seattle. His work appears frequently in the Seattle Times and Seattle magazine. He also maintains the blog Roots and Grubs. His favorite food is pad Thai.
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15 Comments:
Too cute! I love it!
mollykate678 at 4:19PM on 02/23/09
I had a friend who did for wedding favors...they put them in a mini bamboo steamers with a ribbon on top.
nithya at hungrydesi at 4:23PM on 02/23/09
Two real fortunes I've gotten:
1. It is a nice day.
2. If you're still hungry, eat more food.
pbelardo at 4:43PM on 02/23/09
I got one last week that made me spit-take my sake. See it here.
I also got a fortune cookie once that was empty. Not even a blank fortune, just ... nothing, I'm still trying to figure out what that meant.
LunaPierCook at 4:48PM on 02/23/09
My favorite fortune said "Your lover will never wish to leave you." Unfortunately for the relationship I was in at the time the semtiment didn't go both ways.
TurkeyandPickles at 4:51PM on 02/23/09
my favorite one is one I got a couple years ago:
"For a good cause, wrongdoing may be virtuous."
I have it hanging on my fridge as the ultimate Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. :)
jumpyfroggy at 4:55PM on 02/23/09
My two favorites were:
"Bees with mouthfuls of honey have stings in their tails."
and
"One man's onion is another man's lily."
GretchinF at 6:06PM on 02/23/09
"Don't forget your 2000 census."
itsnotbecca at 6:14PM on 02/23/09
The strangest one was "Name the four food groups." I mean, it's a pop quiz, not a fortune.
Funnier yet was when I made fortune cookies for a party and almost everyone found hidden meaning in their fortunes. And on the back of each fortune, I listed lucky numbers, but they were things like "your lucky number has been revoked." Or "Your lucky number is the square root of 17." And some people found hidden meaning in those like the woman who got Pi as her lucky number and she told the story of how her husband used Pi as the combination to a little hotel safe, but then couldn't remember the digits later.
dbcurrie at 6:42PM on 02/23/09
I like this.
melodylio at 9:05PM on 02/23/09
My brother once got one that said, "It is time to get new friends."
piccola at 9:53PM on 02/23/09
The only problem with those is, they don't work when you try to add "In between the sheets".
buffy at 9:54PM on 02/23/09
"A good way to stay healthy is to eat more Chinese food."
I have that one taped in a journal somewhere.
aespsg at 1:51AM on 02/24/09
When I was in college a lot of the fortunes that came out of the dining hall fortune cookies said "Love your parents" LOL.
Amybear at 9:48AM on 02/24/09
It's not quite as good as the kids', but my favorite:
"Coming soon: low-fat, whole-wheat green tea!"
cupcakelust at 11:31AM on 02/24/09