The Little Man

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For the most part I don't make plans. I like to live life as it comes. There are exceptions, of course, like the golf tournaments, concerts, and the music conference. Today I cancelled the trip to the conference. All that hard work for my presentation will have to wait. Why? Well, if you've ever seen Double Indemnity, the great classic Fred MacMurray/Barbara Steinwick film noir movie, you may remember Edward G. Robinson's character (he played a good guy for a change in that movie!), Barton Keyes, talking about how he always had his "little man" tell him when something wasn't right with a claim. That's how I feel: there's a "little man" inside telling me not to get too far from home. Over the past six months my dad has been more or less caught in a revolving door at the hospital. Three bouts of pneumonia, two other cases of chest pains, skin cancer surgery to remove part of his ear, what we feared was gangrene in his foot, and this past week, he fell and injured his head and blackened his eye. The "little man" says "don't get too far from home." I can walk away from a golf tournament in a heartbeat, but to keep checking my phone at a conference, to give a half-hearted attempt at a presentation, and to be present in body only is just not right to my fellow music geeks, all of whom work just as long and hard as I did on their presentations. So it'll wait. Dad's health won't. Here's the scene in Double Indemnity where Keyes talks about his "little man" helping him decipher which claims are fraudulent: