Anecdote

(Betcha didn't think it'd be a four-post kind of day.)

Lunch with the SunSco class was at PeiWei, a great Asian place near church. We all ordered and grabbed our beverages of choice, snagged a heaping box of fortune cookies, and sat at our 12-seat table. Everyone started chowing down on fortune cookies until the meal arrived.

My third cookie, which I ate after I'd finished my Spicy Korean Beef, contained the following fortune:

"DO IT, with confidence."

No, seriously, that's exactly how it was printed.

I faced a moral dilemma: had I been with most of you lovely readers, or my friends back at the alma mater, I would have busted out this exhortation with all manner of ribald commentary. Yet there I sat in the restaurant, surrounded by people that I've taught Sunday School to on multiple occasions, and I had to figure out exactly what kind of pun or inference I can make without crossing the line. Something had to be said, but what?

I held it up. "This is a bit...um, ambiguous."

T read it aloud, and everyone on that side of the table started laughing politely.

I began to see realization dawn on their faces, one by one. Only one of them jumped to the obvious implication as quickly as I did. He grinned and started laughing again. I was so proud.

It was all I could do to contain myself. Five of us, two couples and myself, trying to keep a straight face, each wondering "am I the only one who's following this joke to its obvious conclusion?" And you could read it on each face. Hilarious.

The line was repeated a few more times during the meal, each time adding a little more naughty subtext.

That's right. Corrupting Christian singles, one mind at a time. What can I say.

I guess I should probably do a lesson on coarse joking during my three-week pinch-teaching gig next month. You know, to make up for it.

Not that it's really my fault. Everybody knows that it's standard practice to add two words to the end of every cookie's fortune:

"In bed."