©iStockphoto.com/YinYang

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.