"If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people." Virginia Woolf

There is a quaint family-owned Chinese restaurant about twenty minutes from where I live.  In just a short car ride, which is approximately five to six good songs randomly chosen by iGOD (or what the masses tend to call iPOD), you not only get pleasant service and great food but you also get the chance to be seated by an adorable ten year old who quickly hands you your menus and brings you hot tea.  That's right.  Child labor at its finest.  After this lovely girl gets you situated, you get to order a meal that includes about a month's amount of calories starting from soup and ending with the notorious fortune cookie for only $7.99 plus tax.  Which brings me to the focus of this entry.

Fortune cookies are not the same as when I was wee girl finishing up the scraps of the Poo Poo platter my brothers were told to share but demolished while my parents were busy eating their own meals.  Oh no, things are different now.  Before I go any further, I must say that I am probably the only person who cannot stand to actually eat a fortune cookie.  I take the fortune and pass the broken cookie to the closest person who will not question my lack of interest in the consumption of the so called tasty treat.  With that said, I cracked open my fortune cookie and passed the remnants over to my dinner partner.  I think my giving away of the cookies has resulted in bad luck but I can't be too sure and am not interested in testing its validity. 

Anyway, my fortune cookie had writing not on one side but two.  From what I remember of a fortune cookie, the fortune was usually written on one side and if it had writing on the other side it was normally lucky numbers.  Well this fortune cookie was different.  It had my fortune, which I will go into later, with about a hundred lucky numbers written underneath, and on the back, it had a little educational Chinese lesson.  My Chinese word to learn was "pot sticker" or pronounced in Chinese "Guo-tie."  My first question:  Why did Jason's Chinese lesson contain a word I could actually use which is "vegetable" and mine was something I didn't even think exsisted?  I mean, how often do you hear the word pot sticker used in a sentence?    I had never until that day heard of a pot sticker and from that minute on it became my obsession to not only find out what it was but to be able to incorporate my newly gained knowledge into my daily life.  I went home to look it up and found that a guo-tie (nice, huh?) is a dumpling filled with ground meat, vegetables, or other ingredients, that is browned on one side and simmered.  Other ingrediants?  Pretty shady sounding to me, but I won't go into that.   Ok, so I had established the definition of the word but still had yet to use it appropriately in a conversation.

Three days later I am at my Aunt's house discussing with my cousins my disappointment over receiving a lesson in something I will not be able to put to good use.  My aunt, nowhere in sight at the moment of the discussion, came out into the living room declaring her love for pot stickers.  Don't worry, she isn't a crazy person simply declaring her love for pot stickers.  She had overheard us talking.  Her declaration was made loud and clear so I am sure you can imagine the look of surprise on my face.  I mean really, who says that?  And with such fervor!  So I ask her, "you know what a pot sticker is?" and she gives me a very detailed and accurate definition making me feel like I should go back to school starting at kindergarten and work my way up to a world I am obviously not prepared for at this moment in time. 

Thinking I was through with pot stickers since I figured the only way that they would ever come up was through my obsessing over it in public or another relative realizing their passion for guo-tai, you can imagine my surprise when I was watching the Gilmore Girls and some special guest star declared that she wanted pot stickers in her meal.  What?  Are you kidding me?  Since when did pot stickers become the next macoroni and cheese?  Did I sleep through that lecture on foods not to be ignored.  I feel that I would not be going through this if I had just gotten a more simple word like "vegetable" or "stupified."

On to the fortune itself.  "Everything must have a beginning."  Well there goes my dream of starting pregnancy in the ninth month and giving birth to an eighteen year old.  Thanks stupid fortune cookie.  What next?  Are you going to tell me that coffee starts out as a bean? Or better yet, that a chicken is really a bird? 

Psshh.