Sabrina Noble Columnist

When I was a kid, I'd go through fortune cookies by the bagful, discarding the crunchy goodness and gathering up my fortunes in my grubby hands, sometimes waiting to read them until I had a big pile to go through all at once. If one fortune seemed to repeat itself an extraordinary number of times, then that was the one that would come true. Starry-eyed, I would place it in my crumb-filled lap.

Without fail, though, the repeating theme was something like, "The warm rays of heaven shine down upon you," or, "You should not waste food so."

I'm a fan of neither inspirational messages nor bossiness, so eventually I became disillusioned with the whole fortune cookie thing. What I wanted was something along the lines of, "You will be married on Aug. 25, 2007," or, "Stay away from the bulldog down the street, or he will bite off your little finger on Saturday."

You know, something I could really use.

I'm a big planner. My entire life is organized by a system of checks and balances similar to our government on a municipal öö if not national öö level. The point being that if I could go ahead and jot those things down now, it would be a big help. Who wouldn't want to know where his or her future's heading?

But the fortune cookies clearly didn't do their job. Not once did a warm ray of heaven shine down upon me, and if you knew me, you'd know that I still waste food by the bushel, regardless of the starving children in distant nations. And if the cookies had chided me about personal hygiene or kicking birds, I would have disobeyed then, too, just out of spite.

Of course, once I got to college and both Lucky's and Panda Express were nearby, offering fortune cookies by the bowlful, I decided to give the whole prophetic paper thing another shot. Maybe I was just too young before, I thought. Even fortune cookies can see only so far into the future. So I bought a couple and took a seat.

Even after all those years of disappointment, I cracked those cookies open with childlike faith.

Now maybe some of you get fortunes like, "You lead a truly charmed life," or, "Someone loves you." Most likely, these are lies, but at least they're still cheerful. Mine read, "You will someday be rewarded for this."

What does that mean? Here's my interpretation: My life (the "this" of the fortune) is in a sorry state, and the cookie company is telling me things will get better ("someday").

Oh fortune cookie, what a bleak future you do paint · I would not be thrown into self-doubt so easily, though. First off, I don't think my life is that bad, and I resent the cookie's implication. What does it even know about me? I'll tell you: very little, aside from my relationship with my mother and that fight with my best friend last week. But nothing else.

Second, I hardly need a pat on the back from a scrap of paper. Are depressed souls ever plucked from the very brink by a well-written fortune (as opposed to the ones written in such improper English that their message is unintelligible)? Unlikely.

And then, in my quarrelsome state, I got to thinking ÷ if this same fortune had just fallen into different hands, it might have been interpreted as such: that a dead-end job may lead to a winning lottery ticket, a car accident may land a huge settlement, or crippling financial debt may result in a little house with a white picket fence and a golden retriever named Woofles. Someday.

What a load of shitake mushrooms.

Do not be fooled: Fortune cookies are trying to lure us into a false contentment. In a world of monotonous 9-to-5 desk jobs, terrible evening television and massive commercialization, we are expected to be happy öö or at least resigned to our fate. To be productive, we have to enjoy being a cog in the machine, even if we know we will never be rewarded.

I don't know about you, but I refuse to be the happy cog. NO!

So down with fortune cookies, those stinkin' commies! Up with self-determination! Never settle for the promises cookies can never deliver! Instead, write your own fortune.

And then, if you want to bake them into your own deliciously crunchy cookies, that's your right. We just want to reclaim our futures, not ban snack foods; we're not crazy extremists here ÷ just Americans.

Sabrina Noble is a senior majoring in English and creative writing. One fortune is taped to her desk. She can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.