A crow landed atop a Dead End sign and Jeannie shuddered. This, by itself, wouldn’t normally catch her attention. Birds perch on signs every day. But there was the broken mirror this morning and, during her lunch break, the toothless, homeless woman who muttered curses and chucked a beer bottle at Jeannie’s head when she said, “Sorry, no change.” So yes, the bird distracted her.
At the hospital—her leg in a cast, broken in three places—Jeannie vowed to pay less attention to portends and more attention to traffic. Because, as mother always said: luck is a fickle mistress.