The Fortune Cookie Prophecy Comes True

The Fortune Cookie Prophecy Comes True

531 words


          It all happened because of a fortune cookie he had gotten on his 18th birthday.

          On his 18th birthday, Jake Lee had gone out with his best friend, Robert, to a Chinese restaurant on Solano Avenue down the street from their houses in Berkeley, near what was informally known as Berkeley’s Chinatown because of all the Asian restaurants along Solano Avenue and the Asian Americans living in the neighborhood. for dinner, after his parents had forgotten his birthday. He stormed out of the house and went to Robert S, his best friend’s house.

          Robert S's parents, who were closer to him than his distant aloof parents were, said

         “Go to dinner with Robert and when you come back, we will get a cake.” Giving them 25 dollars.

          They went to the Chinese restaurant, and afterward, they got a fortune cookie. The fortune cookie message resonated with him, and he saved it.

          The message read.

          “You will soon dream of meeting your wife. Rest assured you will meet her, but it may take a few years. Hold onto the dream, it will come true and change your life.”

          The next week, he had the first dream. He fell asleep in a physics class and saw a beautiful woman standing next to him. He yelled out,

          "Who are you?” She merely smiled and disappeared.

          That afternoon, he told his friend, Robert,

          "Dude. I met her in that dream. The girl the fortune cookie talked about "

and he pulled out the fortune and re-read it.

         “Man, who is crazy s…, dude.”

         “Totally, serious, crazy s..., man, I know, but I believe it will come true.”

“          Whatever, Dude.”

          He started having the “Dream” as he called it almost weekly. One day he had to decide where to go in the Peace Corps after he finally graduated from college on his third college try, after five years of recovering from his first disastrous year of failure.

          In the dream. she said “Korea,” and he went to the Peace Corps to find her.

          Two years later, Jake Lee was on leave in his hometown of Berkeley, California after serving in the Peace Corps in Korea, he was going back in a few weeks to take up a job teaching ESL to Koreans working for the U.S. Army. He thought he would go back for two years maximum, work on improving his Korean, gain some job experience and prepare to return to go to Graduate school in international studies focusing on Korea with the hope of eventually getting a job in the federal government doing something internationally. And continue searching for his dream girl, whom he knew he was fated to meet.

          All of this happened, but it took a few more years because his plans were put on hold in 1982, when she walked out of his dreams and into his life. When they met, it was a moment when "electricity sparked from heart to heart 이심촌심
isimchonsim " as Koreans put it. Six weeks later, they were legally married. That night, he showed her the fortune cookie and told her about the dream.

          She said,

         “ 그건 미친 짓이야
geugeon michin jis-iya. That is crazy.”

         “I know, but it is all true.”

         “I know.”

          And that was the beginning of their 40-year fairy tale romance when the dream prophecy of the fortune cookie came true.

The End

         Based loosely on my true love story, but in my case, there was no fortune cookie prophecy, but the dreams were true and did come true eight years after the first dreams. And my parents forgot my 18th birthday, and Robert's parents giving me an impromptu birthday party complete with cake and wine, was true, but we did not go to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. Berkeley’s Chinatown was and is a real neighborhood. Solano Avenue is lined with mostly Asian restaurants from all over Asia, but some are the old-line Chinese and Japanese restaurants that are still there almost 50 years since I left Berkeley. And I had dinner there with Robert a few days after my birthday and my first dream.

         Write a story or poem inspired by this prompt:

         September is "Fortune Cookie Day"!

         Write a poem or story about a message found in a fortune cookie!


         Please be sure to BOLD the words "fortune cookie" and the message that was within the cookie.