Like I said in the last post, my family and friends really stepped up on this move. Really above and beyond, too. That I lived in a second-floor apartment didn’t help matters; my brother Chris nearly busted himself helping me lug heavy furniture downstairs and to the storage unit. And my parents threw themselves completely into that last Thursday, helping me get out of the apartment and to leave it clean enough to hopefully preserve a little of my security deposit. They also loaned me some couch space to sleep on the half of the week, after Salvation Army had come to take away my bed.
By Thursday night my parents and I were all just totally wrecked, and the early morning airport trip was coming in less than twelve hours, and I really wanted to take my parents out for dinner. We went to China Buffet near Fashion Square in Orlando; it’s a local fixture, been there as long as I can remember. I’ve eaten there since high school. They’d never been. Wanted to go one last time before leaving and also wanted to show my folks that I appreciated them and everything they’ve done this week to help make this move work.
So we had a good dinner, commiserating about back and knee pain, joking and laughing and talking family stuff and enjoying decent Chinese food. Towards the end, the waitress put down the bill with three fortune cookies.
I grabbed one and broke it first. It read, “You will have a fine capacity for the enjoyment of life.”
Mom broke hers. It read something like, “You have a talent for intuiting and understanding deeper truth.”
Dad broke his and there was nothing inside.
In all these years of eating Chinese, I’ve never once seen a fortune cookie break open without any fortune whatsoever inside. I guess that that great fountain of ancient Chinese wisdom, the Walton Company of Monroe, Georgia, is of the opinion that if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. It was a funny moment.
Leaving the restaurant, Dad offhandedly commented that he wasn’t sure about the shortest and best route for driving home.
I humbly suggested that we take whatever route would allow him to drive 20 miles per hour and that involved no other cars whatsoever.