Fortune Cokie

When I was a kid and introduced to the concept of Chinese food fortune cookies, it was made very clear how they're supposed to work:

1. You make a wish.
2. You break the cookie and remove the fortune.
3. You read the fortune in the context of your wish.
4. Pause to consider the profound insight you just received into life and the nature of reality.

Apparently this was never made an established practice, and clearly restaurant goers and fortune writers have become lazy and ambivalent to the whole experience. Most of the time the fortunes aren't fortunes at all, but rather statements or observations, or weirdly narrow and petty clues about the insignificant minutia of daily concerns.

I keep to my principles however and push on. The other day I stopped by a Chinese restaurant on the way back from grocery shopping, and enjoyed a huge plate of chicken chow-fun. I was steeped in reflective poignancy brought on by a full stomach, a cup of barley green tea, and the muted bustle of the street, reflecting off the burnished oak of the restaurant tables. The waitress hands me my obscenely cheap bill and a fortune cookie.

I wished:

"I would like to meet a woman in the next month, and for her and I to feel mutual, unforced feelings of attraction, and an insatiable eagerness and excitement to develop our burgeoning relationship into something profound and long term."

I broke open the cookie and read this fortune: