I just had lunch from the local noodle shop. I’m embarrassed to admit that I ate the fortune cookie they threw in the bag. “Right now you need to be patient,” the script read. Spot on, thought I, but why “right now”? I would do well to read that advice at every meal, every day.
I wasn’t there in elementary school when they were handing out patience and teaching kids how to use it. Maybe we were traveling: I was in three different schools in third grade: perhaps that’s when it happened. I remember my Mom asking if there were make-up lessons available, but I think we moved again before they came around.
I learned later that it was actually a double lesson; they were giving out tact as well. Missed that too.
The liner notes for the Mamas and Papas album Deliver include horoscopes for each of them. Two were Virgos, but the horoscopes are specific to the day, so those two are quite different. Cass Elliott and I share a birthday and it’s downright spooky how almost every word describes me. (You can read it here).
My favorite line is this one: “Tact is something you have to learn, for your uncompromising truthfulness and honesty make tact seem wasted time to you.” Amen to that.
As for patience, Ambrose Bierce defined it thus: “A minor form of despair disguised as a virtue.” Stanislaw Lec said "you must have a lot of patience to learn to have patience." Amen twice more.
That’s my second-favorite fortune pictured above. My favorite? Well, that would be the one below. Ransom and I held our wedding rehearsal dinner at a Chinese place in New Haven. He was sitting next to me and I opened my cookie to see this. Honest!
That was the first album I ever bought. I wore that sucker out! At one time, I knew all the words to Creeque Alley and what it all meant. No room in the cranium for that anymore but I could still sing along.
ReplyDeleteI noted several things in that Horoscope which remind me of long ago, including 'patrician tastes' and 'making do with a little if you have to'. I also remember us ALL going out to have what we perceived as a 'good time'. Deliver me from my judgment! Neat about the second fortune. I had not heard about that.