The fates

You're probably smarter than I, and more prone to picking up on the little cues that life sometimes offers. I wouldn't necessarily think it's a bad omen if I tripped over a sidewalk crack or or found a coin face down in the gutter. 

But if things kept happening to me, I would get out of the town where they happened. 

So, like, if I went to the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in New York and got bopped on the melon by the gigantic Cat In The Hat balloon and wound up in a coma for a month, I would not go to that parade again, or any gathering with inflated felines being toted around by men and women on the other end of long ropes.

That's what happened to Gothamite Kathleen Caronna in 1997. She was watching the floats at 72nd Street near Central Park West when the Cat hit a lamppost. The lamppost knocked her lights out for a month, as I say, and the lawsuits were flying before she got back to her husband and eight-month-old son. 

She sued and won an undisclosed amount from Macy's and the city. It was enough for her and her husband and son to move on up to a deluxe apartment in the skyyyyyyyy. 

And then in 2006, New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle was piloting a private plane that crashed into her new flat - on 72nd and York Avenue, several blocks east of where she met the big cat.

Lidle's private jet had taken off from New Jersey and crashed into the Belaire Apartments in Manhattan, killing Lidle and his flight instructor, Tyler Stanger. The  engine of the Cirrus SR20 landed in Caronna's bedroom, causing the apartment to be consumed by flames right away. Fortunately, Mrs Caronna was not home just yet, but she was on the way, and arrived shortly thereafter to this: 

21 people in the building were injured.

I hope Mrs Caronna took the advice of her sister-in-law, Lisa Brown, who told the Daily News paper, "How do you go through two major things like this? It’s spooky. It’s very spooky.”

One final twist: the flight instructor, Stanger, had a friend named Bob Cartwright, who was supposed to have joined him and the Yankee for this flight. 

Luckily, Cartwright changed his plans and did not go, and survived.

For a month, until he was on a plane that crashed, and he died.

So, when you hear a voice telling you not to do something, listen!