Why is it we read the ½” x 2” slips of paper found in fortune cookies? Surely no one truly believes our future lives will take certain turns dependent on which cellophane-wrapped treat we get. Right?

I will admit, though, there have been some messages I’ve remembered through the years. In 1983, nine months pregnant and ready to pop any moment, I broke open a cookie whose message read: You will have a large family. They were right; she weighed nine pounds, eleven ounces. Her rolls of fat caused her to look like a baby sumo wrestler. She’s still tall, but now lithe.

Last spring I opened a cookie to find a message that I swear was penned by one of the Task Masters from The Biggest Losers:  Regenerate your system through diet and exercise. Save the cookies! Wait. You gave me a cookie that I had to break in two to get the message, and then you tell me to SAVE it? For whom? The dog? Well, he actually does like those crunchy golden treats.

A few months ago I asked my financial advisor Ric Edelman if he had gotten into the fortune cookie writing business. My fortune that day had read: Earn all you can, save all you can, share all you can. This is advice Ric has been giving for many years. All right, so the fortune didn’t say anything about the wonder of compound interest, but still.

This past Thursday I cracked open my little cookie to find a suggestion that I “ask that special someone on a date.” So last night I convinced my husband to have a date night and watch the Netflix movie we’ve had sitting around for at least five weeks. (Does anyone else rent Netflix then take forever to watch the movie? Please tell me I’m not alone.)

The movie was Gravity. I’ll bet the views of earth were spectacularly breathtaking on an IMAX screen. It didn’t have quite the same effect on our at-home TV. But my husband hated the movie, calling it stupid and unrealistic.

Photo courtesy of NASA / Unsplash

The movie made me dizzy with all that lack-of-gravity weightlessness spinning the actors and objects and debris around, around, around. And I felt anxious with the lack of control throughout 99.9% of the movie. For the record, I have just crossed “astronaut” off my list of things I might want to be when I grow up.

So much for the date night advice, cookie.

After thoughtful consideration, maybe that’s why we DO read the small slips of paper—to see if there might possibly be some pertinent connection to our lives at the moment.

And hey, thanks to the cookie’s suggestion, at least I got to drop that Netflix movie back in the mailbox today.

To my readers: What would you write if you could pass along one short message in a cookie to a stranger?