And The Point Is... by Anne Porter

I only eat at Chinese food restaurants for two reasons. The first and foremost is because of the gift of fortune cookies. I am aware that I can merely go to the local grocery store and purchase a box, but just the pleasure of a singular little phrase that defines the whole day makes the experience most exciting.

Yesterday when I visited the Village Buffet Chinese restaurant on Lindbergh Boulevard, I received a fortune which said, "I am the master of my own destiny."

At first I resisted my friend's idea of the Oriental cuisine because for whatever reason, exactly two hours after eating Chinese food, I am starving. No small tingling sensation at the base of the stomach either. It is as if I have not touched a morsel of food for days, hours, months, or weeks.

But because my friend cajoled me to lunch at this buffet, I discovered another valid excuse to go.

This new cause to go currently would not be the excellent service or the tasty cuisine. That does not particularly interest me. What did, however, at least yesterday, was the Chinese astrology place mat.

I am not confessing that Chinese astrology is a new topic to me. For years I have known I am a dragon as I was born in 1976. However, in all the accounts and descriptions I have read about dragons through the years, never before did a prediction call me "eccentric" as this one did.

Until now, whenever I envisioned the word "eccentric," Andy Warhol walked into my brain carrying his portrait of Campbell Soup cans. Or some misguided individual who lives with 20 freely-roaming felines, or even some members of my family who insist on wearing bulky, gaudy jewelry which flatters them in no way whatsoever.

No, "eccentric" fits me in no detail of my life. Other details about me that the 20-word horoscope included were, "Full of passion and health," and with my passion and health I should, "Marry a rat later in life," with the condition that I should avoid dogs.

The rest of the prediction about me, after pondering that maybe it has some value, still paled in comparison with the first word, "eccentric."

Since "eccentric" fixated on my brain's agenda, I decided I must broach the subject after my friend had the audacity to say this description sounded like me.

"Am I eccentric?" I asked.

To this, he replied, not eccentric, because I have no money (in order to be "eccentric" one must have money), but nonetheless strange. For someone to call me "strange" created no new phenomenon in my life and at least it cured me of that obessession with that incessant word, "eccentric."

The moral of the story here is that whatever people read, say, listen, write, they mold it to fit the way they define themselves. Either that, or it's the age-old adage, "Don't believe everything that you read."