Fortune: Don’t kiss an elephant on the lips today

D
on’t you hate it when you’re having a conversation or reading a story, and all of a sudden, the topic changes. There’s no segue, not even a mention of what the other person changes the topic too. They just change the subject. And if you try to bring them back to the original topic, they come off as if they are highly offended. But I want to make it clear, right here and now, it is us, who have to play catch up, who should be offended. I mean, it’s rude, isn’t it, when you are talking about something like flowers, and all of a sudden, they start talking about elephants without the segue?
Segue!
Speaking of elephants – my wife was offended by my last column. I don’t think it was the false statement that I made about hunting in Africa that offended her. She is used to what she considers lies in these little stories I write, but I feel colorful modifiers. I think it was that I would even entertain the idea of shooting and eating an elephant.
“It wasn’t a baby elephant,” I told her, “It was a medium-size elephant. And it wasn’t like I was eating it while it was alive. After all, it was cut up into bite-size pieces.” That didn’t make any difference to her. Any elephant, small, medium or large, was off limits, especially as food. You see, Connie thinks we should love the elephants. And it is that idea that brings me, logically, to Chinese food. Well, not the food, but it does have a connection to the fortune cookie. Now get that confused look off your face. I’ll explain it.
About 12 years ago or so, Connie and I lived in San Antonio, and we decided to go to the zoo. The San Antonio zoo is a world-class zoo. It was one of our favorite go-to spots in that city.
But before we went to the zoo, it was lunchtime, so we went to a Chinese buffet. San Antonio also has some of the best Chinese food I’ve ever eaten, and that includes a couple of buffets. 
At the end of any meal in a Chinese restaurant, you get a fortune cookie. Some people think this is an American invention. It isn’t exactly. This cookie was invented at the Japanese Tea Gardens in San Francisco by Makoto Hagiwara sometime between 1907 and 1909, so we’ll call it in 1908 because that is sometime between 1907 and 1909. 
Of course, we all know what the fortune cookie is. It’s a thin, crispy sugar cookie folded on itself a couple of times and baked to a hard, rigid, crunchy gag-you-in-the-throat wafer that breaks into sharp knife-edge shrapnel and tastes like artificial oranges, vanilla and sadness. But it’s not the cookie you’re after, unless you are that one wanting to have something sharp, hard and oh-so-not-tasty jammed in between your teeth and gums, piercing to your jaw bone and dislodging a tooth. How lovely! But, for the rest of us, what we’re after is stuffed inside that piece of orange-and-vanilla-flavored wood plank. You see, sometime shortly after inventing this thing, Hagiwara was eating one and bleeding profusely from the mouth. Then he thought to himself, “You know what this needs? Paper!” I guess that was to soak up the blood. So, he put the fortune inside the cookie and gave it to China. He also insisted that it was now part of their cultural heritage! It’s no wonder that China has had it in for Japan forever and a day! But they’ve also been imposing it on us ever since then because we allowed Hagiwara to live in the United States. 
That’s okay. I mean, who doesn’t love the profound wisdom found on those pieces of paper. I particularly loved one I got many years ago that read, “Thank God, I’m finally out of that cookie.  10, 23, 38.” That was one of those life-changing events for me.
But what does this have to do with elephants? you may ask. Remember, I was talking about elephants. This is a story about elephants, so don’t change the subject.
Connie and I were going to the zoo after lunch, as I said. Connie knows that I am particularly fond of elephants. I do love that animal. They are fascinating and delicious, but don’t tell Connie I just mentioned that aspect of them.
We finished our lunch and got our fortune cookies. I won’t eat them because they’re nasty. But I will read the slip of paper. Now, I am not making this part of the story up. Y’all can ask Connie if you don’t believe me. She’ll corroborate what I’m writing unless I’ve failed to fulfill the ever-shifting honey-do list. So, it might be better for me if you didn’t ask her. But, my fortune cookie said the following: “Don’t kiss an elephant on the lips today.” Again, I’m not making that up. Not only did the fortune realize that we were headed for the zoo and that I love the elephants, it knew that if I were tempted to kiss an elephant on the lips, but it would also have been that very day! Since then, I have tried to figure out what part of the elephant would have been okay for me to kiss on that particular day.
I handed it to Connie, and she started laughing with gusto. 
So, we went to the zoo, and I watched the elephants. I started laughing about what had happened. It was only much later that it struck me. Maybe I should have gone back the next day for that elephant kiss I had missed. After all, that female elephant was a beauty!