fortune cookie

Ever notice that any time you hear the phrase “that’s how the cookie crumbles” it always seems to come on the heels of bad luck? And if you think about it, a cookie crumbling is rather tragic event.  Usually. The one exception seems to be a fortune cookie, which is generally crumbled with the best of intentions. On March 30, 2005 quite a number of fortune cookies earned their title.

The Powerball drawing on that fateful Wednesday turned up a surprising number of second place winners, all having played the numbers 22, 28, 32, 33, 39 & 40. All told, 110 folks had that particular combination of digits, a fact that stymied the Lottery Commission. Foul play or some sort of fraud was initially suspected, but it turned out that all of those lucky people had played numbers found in fortune cookies produced by Wonton Food of Long Island NY. Thousands of cookie messages had contained those numbers. Most interestingly, the message accompanying those numbers read, “All the preparation you’ve done will finally be paying off.”

While the Fortune Cookie Incident of 2005 is rather interesting, we think we’ve got the potential to top it. In fact, we take a shot at it every Wednesday. When you pick up each week’s Paper Shop, you’ll find $100 worth of Powerball tickets on the inside back cover. If those numbers hit and bring in a jackpot of $250,000 or more, we’ll divide up those winnings with anyone who’s got an intact copy of that issue. If you’ve got the September 25th edition, you’ve already got 100 big ones invested in tomorrow night’s drawing, and this week’s issue contains numbers for the October 9th drawing.