Local Fatty Learns Chinese Through Fortune Cookies
By Stephen Lurie
Nov. 11, 2012
Area man Jack Yarborough discovered this week an unexpected and unintended benefit to his Chinese take-out habit: learning Chinese. By his estimates, the 340-pound Mr. Yarborough must have consumed “over 2,000 fortune cookies” in the last few years alone.
While at the time he hadn’t considered the use of studying the Chinese word on the back of each fortune, his new-found language skills have already served him well. “If I order in Chinese, I tend to get free wontons and sometimes even more fortunes”, Mr. Yarborough said. While learning the language through the traditional means of class or software might have been more efficient, Yarborough is unfazed.
“The way I see it, using the take-out Chinese method really meant I got the full cultural education, along with the language skills,” Yarborough said. While he now searches for new work with his marketable language skills, there is one thing holding him back: the fat clogging his veins and arteries.
