May fortune smile upon you

My school is hosting the annual International Festival tomorrow evening. Since there are so many different cultures represented at my school, the entire building is decorated with posters, facts, article of clothing, etc. about the many various countries that our students are from.

Every grade level is assigned a country or two, to use as a decorating theme for their hallway. This year, third grade has the country of China. So our hallway is festooned with construction paper lanterns, glue and glitter fireworks, fans, dragons, pictures and drawings of the Great Wall of China, etc.

Today, I had the idea that I would have my kids write fortunes, of the sort you would find in fortune cookies, on large slips of paper, and that we could put the good ones out in the hallway. As you might expect, I got some interesting responses.

Lump wrote, "Be a police when you grow up." -- Hey, at least he participated. A quick update: though certainly not a model student, Lump has remained manageable since last Friday's "breakthrough." Ironically, he hasn't played football with me since then, but he also hasn't made noises or played around in class. He doesn't really do the work in class with us, but any time he looks like he's about to start causing trouble, I go over and ask if he'd like to do some more 2-digit by 2-digit multiplication problems. He eats those up like Scooby Doo with Scooby Snacks.

Here are some other "fortunes" by the kids:

When your happy your mom is happy.

You are going to the chocolate factory.

Some people are smart like in Dallas, Texas.

If you swim like a fish you will be a fish like a different one like Pinocchio.

One day you will get married and then have a divorce.

Everyone goes through a lot of phrases.

The man with a woman can live.

If you study and study you will become gooder in school.

A man with a house does not need another house to give to his children when they are eight years old.

You will get a lot of money when you are 13 years old.

They say emnesia isn't a word, well here are your lucky numbers 4,8,12,9,6,2,1.

If you eat a fortune cookie and read this paper you will become smarter.

Definitely some pearls of wisdom in there. As well as some opals of confusion, some topaz of oddity, and some amethysts of what the hell??