So I had some Chinese take-out food for dinner, and I felt fat and happy with my belly filled.

When I opened my fortune cookie, I felt even more content, for my fortune told me, “You will always be successful in your professional career,” and there I was, feeling really good about my art and myself and thinking, I should really iron the little folds out of this fortune paper and keep it someplace safe.

So I pulled at the ends to straighten the piece of paper, all the while thinking of my recently commissioned pieces and the promise of more work and how I really, really like this fortune, when all of a sudden, after pulling a little too hard, my fortune rips in two and my hands go flying in opposite directions, each still gripping the end it held.

Surprised, I looked down at my ripped fortune and noticed that the tear was towards the right end, so that most of the fortune was still intact, and even though I am really not that superstitious or silly or insanely irrational, my first fleeting thought was that this must totally invalidate the fortune and change my fate.

Sufficiently dismayed by that thought, I re-read my fortune to reassure myself—then again and again, with growing horror, until I groaned aloud in distress, “Ah!”

“What is it? What’s wrong?” H.E. asked, and I proceeded to tell him.

“Well, my fortune read, ‘You will always be successful in your professional career,’ but I’ve accidentally ripped it!”

“Yeah, so?” he prompted.

“And now my fortune reads, ‘You will always be succ in your professional career.‘”

At this, H.E.—that unfeeling, uncaring brute of a man—burst into the loudest, heartiest laughter I’ve ever heard, and he actually had to wipe tears from his eyes, he was laughing so hard.

I pouted.

Though I’ve got to admit, it is kind of funny.

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