Reversal of fortune

Are you aware of how to make a fortune cookie fortune that much raunchier? One way to do so is to add the words "in bed" to the end of it. I learned of this several years ago at work when a colleague mentioned this over lunch at a local Chinese restaurant.

Workplace birthday tradition
Where I work at OSU, it is the custom that when a department staffer has a birthday, he or she has to bring in something to eat in honor of the event. One year, I came up with an idea to play upon the aforementioned concept.

Help me, Rhonda. Help, help me, Rhonda.
I then contacted Rhonda Lashen Schottenstein, who ran her very successful "Fortunately Yours" fortune cookie company at the time, for assistance. Rhonda was most helpful, just great to work with on this. I came up with three sayings and had her company add the "in bed" suffix to them so it would already be printed on the fortune and you wouldn’t have to add it on your own. They were sayings such as "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise in bed" and "A penny saved is a penny earned in bed." A few weeks later, Rhonda got them too me.

I took them in the office and they were a big smash hit with my co-workers. They really got a huge kick out of it. But, this isn’t the end of the story, as a bigger laugh is yet to come.

Co-workers turned the joke back on me
For, you see, another custom is for the rest of the staff to meet up at the birthday person’s work station and serenade him or her with "Happy Birthday." Only this time, in my case, they sang, "Happy Birthday to you in bed. Happy Birthday to you in bed. Happy Birthday, Dear David in bed. Happy Birthday to you in bed." I just loved it. It made my day.