Fortune Kooky

People say that once they break a bone, any bone, when the weather is crummy, they feel rheumatism and an ache in the bone that has long been mended. I've always felt that that must be a royal pain, but also rather poetic. I don't know, maybe something about how a break in the original structure can always be felt and serves as a reminder. Fortunately for me, I've never broken anything thus far, other than a vase, or a dish or two. But my tongue is another story. It's nothing really icky, just that when I'm not feeling well, getting a cold, not getting a job etc., the right underside of my tongue starts to hurt. It's like the tongue knows. The tongue is kind of my soothsayer. Last night, my tongue told me to get some soup at the Chinese place next store. I don't like eating fake/Americanized Chinese, but who could argue with a tongue? So I got a small soup, and sat there sipping and sometimes slurping. No one else was frequenting the joint, except for a rowdy group that kept reading their fortunes out loud to one another. I felt kind of bad about sitting there, only ordering a soup, but I thought small business is better than no business. I got my check, along with two orange slices, and a fortune cookie wrapped in plastic. Geez, I could use a good fortune, a really good one. A bomb of a fortune. A good bomb, anyway. I opened it, and it read "You are heading for a land of sunshine." Well, I'll be darned! This is great. I haven't seen any sunshine lately, in the way of a job at least. What kind of sunshine will it be? A really good job offering, two great job offerings, three? What's in store? I felt happy. The steady ache in my tongue had subsided a little, like it too read and understood the cookie's message. I paid the bill, which sadly for the restaurant only amounted to three dollars, and while I was waiting for my change, I got to thinking about how crazy everything has been. How kooky! What was and is the rhyme or reason? And then I thought about the terrible fast-food Chinese place in Poughkeepsie, a hop, skip, and food-poisoning jump from my college Vassar. Friends of mine would order that terrible food late into the night, and somehow came out of it unscathed. The place was called "Fortune Kooky," which always made me laugh for a variety of reasons. I assumed that the owners were not trying to be ironic, but how could they not know, or how could no one ever tell them? It was a conspiracy of dunces and comediennes that wanted to keep the funny interpretation on the down-low. It's strange that so many years later, this funny name would pop up in my mind's eye, and how it summed up everything rather beautifully - fortune kooky. Things have been so kooky, but apparently, I'm on my way to some fortune, and sunshine.