Whithersoever They Blow

When I worked at the flower shop, I somehow came into possession of the "fact" that a town our size could support 1.5 flower shops. At the time that I began working there, our shop was one of two. Eventually a third opened and then the first one closed and then another one opened. Bottom line, for much of the time, we were one of three flower shops in a town that could, theoretically, only support 1.5. At this point, only one shop remains, so anyone looking to start a small business might be interested to know that, statistically, our town is a wide open market for half a flower shop.

All this by way of saying that, although I carry that (dubious) statistic around in my head, I do not have any such statistic for how many Chinese restaurants a town our size can support. I can say, however, that though our town has only around 6000 people, we have three Chinese restaurants, all of which seem to be doing a respectable amount of business.

Daughter-Only, The Boyfriend and I had lunch at one of the three today and when she opened her fortune cookie, she chuckled and tossed the little strip of paper toward me, saying, "This one should have been yours."

Because I am the bath-taker in the family, I knew immediately that she must've thought it read: "There is no sorrow in the world that a hot bath wouldn't help, just a little bit." However, it actually read: "There is no sorrow in the world that a hot both wouldn't help, just a little bit."

Sometimes Eastern philosophy is just too complicated for me.

I tossed the slip back to Daughter-Only, saying, "I don't think you read this one quite right."

Then, she started reading out loud and because she was seeing "both" as a typo, she rhymed it with "broth" rather than recognizing it for the word it actually is, which sent us both into mild hysterics. And then, maybe a little less mild. And then, maybe I was lying across the bench on my side of the booth, gasping for breath and banging on the table a little. Just for a minute or two, but still...

Whatever statistical reasoning may beat at the heart of three successful Chinese restaurants in our little town, I'm grateful for all three of them. That way, when we humiliate ourselves in one, we've got the others to fall back on.