I took part in a casual bike ride last month in celebration of a friend’s daughter’s birthday. Our first stop was Trophy Cupcakes in Wallingford. It was there that I discovered that my wallet was missing. I checked my pockets several times, but the wallet was gone. I was pretty sure I had brought it with me, but there was an outside chance that I had simply forgotten it from the get-go. The rest of the bike ride was pleasant enough. Well, I took a tumble on the Elliott Bay Bike Trail after coming down the overpass ramp: I was a bit too effective at keeping right and ended up catching the railroad tracks that parallel the trail. Fortunately, I had overprepared for the cold weather and wore four layers of pants, so I got off completely unscathed. Okay, so aside from wiping out that one time, the ride was quite pleasant, but the thought that I had lost my wallet nagged at me for the rest of the day. On the way home after the ride, I retraced my path, stopping to examine more closely the areas where I had stopped to remove a jacket or adjust some clothing. But sadly, no wallet. When I got home, I checked my e-mail hoping against hope that somebody had found the wallet and deduced how to contact me from whatever hadn’t already been stolen from it. And lo and behold, there was a message waiting for me from a person who works in the area we cycled through and who found my wallet barely a half hour after I had lost it. (And probably even before I realized that I had lost my wallet at all.) I jokingly thought to myself, “Well, when I go to pick up my wallet, how can I prove that it’s mine? I don’t have any identification with me; it’s all in the wallet!” But of course, my picture is on my identification, so it’s pretty obvious that I’m the right person. I offered the finder a reward, but he declined it, saying, “You’d do the same for me if the roles were reversed.” He was right, of course. And as far as I can tell, nothing was missing from my wallet. Even the fortune cookie fortune was still there, one that I’d been carrying around in my wallet for months for good luck.

What was the fortune?

Behold the power of the fortune cookie fortune.