A very long time ago, a young woman and I were eating at a Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles, and of course, we each got a
fortune cookie.
This is what came out of mine…
View attachment 764928
Very odd, that. Like horoscopes, and other similar instances of fortune-telling. fortune cookies are always very vague, nonspecific, so that by the Barnum/Forer effect, anyone can find a way to interpret it to fit them. You just don't ever see fortune cookies being this specific. For the vast majority of those who might have received this fortune, it would surely not make sense. For me, only at the time that I received it, it made perfect sense. See the story that follows farther down this post.
I wrote the date on the back, laminated it, and carry it to this day, in my wallet.
View attachment 764930
We had
“met” online on the FidoNet, a loose network of BBSes that was popular among computer geeks, in the days before the public had access to the Internet. Of course, at that time, the FidoNet, like most computer-based media, was dominated by stereotypical nerds—desperately lonely young men, very much in want of female companionship. When a young woman appeared in one of the forums there, and identified herself as such, and also expressed dissatisfaction with the dating prospects in her home area, she attracted a lot of attention. It seems a miracle that I, probably one of the more extreme examples of the stereotypical lonely nerd, was the one who succeeded at calling her attention to myself, and getting her to consider me as a possible prospect.
On 08 April 1994, after quite a few weeks of assorted communications, she arrived on a Greyhound bus, from Reedsport, Oregon, to Santa Barbara, California, to meet me in person. We figured that this would be a fairly short visit, and that if it looked like anything would come of it, we'd figure out future visits, and whatever came from there.
Once we were together, things seemed to happen very rapidly. By the time we made that overnight trip to Los Angeles, we had a pretty good idea where things were headed.
The restaurant where I got this fortune cookie was across the street from the Mormon Temple in Los Angeles. In an abstract, unofficial way, I figure we were sort-of engages, at the time we got this fortune cookie. We didn't actually state it, but it seemed clear where things were headed.
The following day, after shopping for and buying an engagement ring, right there in the jewelry store, I properly, formally proposed to her.
A year after that, 13 April 1995, at the Temple across the street from where I got this fortune cookie…
View attachment 764942
In a month and a day from today, we will have been married for twenty-eight years.
Not that, in general, I give any credence to fortune cookies, horoscopes, or other forms of random divination. In this case, I have a solid, unshakable belief that for whatever reason, God wanted Seanette and me to be together, that He had a hand in manipulating improbable events to this end, and in somehow allowing the two of us to remain together all this time, in spite of conflicting personality traits that would seem to make our relationship unlikely to be viable. He may very well have had some hand in directing this fortune cookie to me, as a way of reassuring me that the crazy path I found myself rapidly and uncontrollably following was the path that I was meant to follow.
