Any Future I Want

One sign of being married for 22.33 years is when you find yourself at home on a Saturday night decommissioning one of the two Linux servers under your desk. It was while I was finding a replacement for the 'fortune' program that serves up my cycling fortune cookie that I was reminded of the fortune cookie I got last night at Mulan in Midtown.

It was empty.

I was the only one at the table with an empty fortune cookie. We debated what it would mean to have no fortune. Does it mean the future is too cloudy to predict? Does it mean that the news is too involved to fit in a sentence or two?

Before we could list out all the possibilities, the waitress brought me another cookie. She felt bad that I was missing out on this important piece of information (or she was secretly afraid that I had no future).

I got my second cookie, and it did have a fortune. It was exactly the same fortune that my wife had gotten. That was my wife's fortune, not mine.

Another round of "What does this mean?"

I finally decided that I could decide my own fortune. I don't need anyone telling me what my fortune will be. It's in my hands.

Dr. Seuss said something like this: You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.