Laughter Has No Accent!!

"Cramming."
photo courtesy George Taylor M.D.

In the 1990s, I had the opportunity to be part of a “Clown Exchange Program”  with Le Rire Medécin. This meant I got to go to Paris for three weeks and clown around in six different French hospitals in Paris and Nantes.

I am not fluent in French. Well, actually that’s an understatement. I can’t speak a lick. But I soon learned that laughter has no accent. Working there wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be. Not knowing the language forced me to be more creative.

My biggest lesson, however, came during my third and final week there. My wife Lesley came over, and we did the usual tourist stuff: art museums, sidewalk cafés. In the Musée D’Orsay, something clicked! We were looking at this gigantic painting of men in a life boat on a storm-tossed sea, fighting a giant serpent. And I asked myself,  “What was the artist thinking, painting such an enormous canvas? No one could hang it on the wall unless they lived in a castle. . .  He painted it without electric light to see . . .  Why would he put so much time and effort into one painting?”

Then I had my “aha” moment. That painting had lasted for centuries and was an amazing piece of art. My artistry is fleeting, but no less worthy. There’s only one reason I slather on the makeup and walk into walls: it’s the look on my audience’s face (be it one or many). Not a laugh, just a ” look” — this is proof of my artistry.  I put my heart and soul into what I do, and while that “look” only lasts for a split second, the moment will be in their hearts for a lifetime. It’s something money can’t buy.

On the merits of the “stand-up wiggle”

We met her on her first birthday, making clown rounds at the hospital. Every time she saw me her eyes would bug out and she would wiggle. I call this a “stand-up wiggle,” which is the highest accolade a clown can receive from a baby. I like to think this baby wiggled because she was excited to see me, but maybe it’s because she didn’t know how to clap yet? I’d sing “You Are My Sunshine” and she’d wiggle even more.

She had a very bad heart when she was born. On the day we found out she was going to get a heart transplant we were all so excited we were dancing in the halls. The mother was dancing, the nurses were dancing, the doctors were dancing, the clowns were dancing and the baby was wiggling–this was celebration time!

That was a Monday. On Wednesday, the transplant was done and I looked in on her through the window of her isolation room in the cardiac ICU.  There she was in all her nakedness, baring her stitches and wounds. She was under sunlamps to keep warm. The nurses had given her these fluorescent yellow sunglasses to protect her eyes, and she looked like a celebrity. On Friday, I noticed the baby’s name was missing from the patient board. I got excited. “Is she leaving the floor?” I asked.

The nurse said,” She’s sprouting wings. She is leaving us.”

We went ahead with our clown rounds, but when we passed the room where she had been in recovery, we broke down. My partner just couldn’t take it anymore and ran for the lounge and started to cry. I ended up in front of the isolation window, looking at the empty crib, singing “You are my sunshine” like a slow ballad.

When I finished, I turned to my left and her  father was standing next to my shoulder. He stood tall, and a tear was in his eye. He placed a hand gently on my shoulder and said softly, “Thank You.”

A special time and space.

Peep in a Cup

Here’s another Easter story. One day, while making my rounds with the “ether bunny,” I heard about a case of marshmallow chicks that had been donated to the hospital. Of course these couldn’t be given to the children because there is enough sugar in them to make your teeth itch. So-o-o, they were divided and distributed to the nurses’ stations. The staff likes sweets, just like anyone else.

So I decided to take a survey of how people eat marshmallow chickens. Some eat them whole, stuffing the entire confection into their mouth. Some bite the heads off first and some pick their eyes out! Not me. I just lick them and put them back!

I knew the nurses needed a little boost of laughter. They been having a particularly bad day. I took one of the marshmallow chicks and placed it in a urine specimen container.

I walked up to the charge nurse with it and said, “Someone ‘peeped’ in the cup and I don’t know whose it is!”

The nurse burst into laughter and immediately took the specimen bottle; placed it in a Ziploc bag and inserted that into one of those plastic containers that they use for sending money from the drive thru to the bank teller inside. . . Laughing, she said, “Let’s send it to the lab!”

All I could picture was a capsule with a frightened marshmallow peep winding its way through a maze of pipes as it made its way to the lab.

Moral: A joy shared is a joy multiplied.

Bunny Tales

It was Eastertime and I was doing my classic bit where I would take this 2-inch stuffed rabbit and do a little puppet routine on a table top. I would sing the “Hokey Pokey” and perform a little dance with the toy.

” You put your right foot in . . .You put your right foot out . . .” STOP.

I would look around the room, sniff the air, and continue: ” You put your left foot in . . . You put your left foot out.” STOP.

I’d pick up the rabbit, smell it, and make a face as though I’d just noticed a foul odor.

Then, I would ask the person next to me to smell the rabbit and tell me if they thought it smelled  funny. In most cases people were hesitant to sniff. They were afraid that it was going to squirt water at them. However, I assured them that it wouldn’t.

When they finally placed it to their nose, I asked. “Does it smell funny?”

“No.”

“It should. It’s the ETHER BUNNY!”

Screaming Baby Lullaby

My banjo teacher always said, ” When all else fails, slay’ em with a waltz.” So as a compassionate, non-violent clown, I do my own version of this. I’ve discovered that singing or just humming a good old-fashioned hymn or lullaby will calm just about anyone who is within earshot, especially at a children’s hospital.

Music is said to be the voice of angels. Well, it’s the voice of hospital clowns, too! We have used music to bring heart rates from 170 down to 115; in other cases we have raised dangerously low blood pressure by dancing around to the marches we play on our ukuleles and cheap kazoos.

One time, after a performance in one room in the ICU, we were told, “We need one of those over here.”

At a local hospital where I live, they play the Brahms lullaby over the PA system every time a baby is born. It gives everyone a warm, fuzzy feeling. And it proves my point.

Nursing Notes from Nurse B.B.

 

That's me, front and center with the other clowns at Children's Hospital Boston! Photo Courtesy George A. Taylor, M.D.

Heartstrings

The clown’s work not only brings laughter, it sometimes brings tears. Tears of joy and tears of sadness.

Tears and laughter are attached together to the same heartstring.

We have all laughed till we cried, and cried so much that we started laughing.

We sometimes laugh at a child’s tears, but other times their giggles and laughs make us cry.

_______________________________________________________________

Through my work at Children’s Hospital Boston, I was privileged to see firsthand the effect of humor on the healing process. The hospital, which was founded in 1869, is the pediatric teaching hospital for Harvard Medical School. Its first year, it had 69 patients. Take a look at some more current (the year 2000) mind-blowing statistics:

  • 17,599 Discharges
  • 3,447 Observation Days
  • 19,434 Inpatient Surgical Procedures
  • 10,815 Ambulatory Surgical Procedures
  • 258,740 Clinic Visits
  • 51,948 Emergency department visits (not including parents, grandparents, or guardians)
  • 900 nurses & patient service staff
  • 791 Attending medical and dental staff
  • 671 Residents and fellows
  • 988 Nurses
  • 2,317 Other full-time employees
  • 516 Other part time employees
  • 509    Volunteers
  • 365 inpatients beds
  • 11 floors of clinics
  • 8 Clowns!!!!!!

So if the clowns see only 1 shift of Medical/Dental/House/Nursing staff and Volunteers, plus the 19,000-odd kids going to surgery, not to mention a few thousand parents, nannies and people asking for directions, I’d say our quick census count is “Up There!”

My mantra…

Babies cry before they laugh.

Tears show that there is a child within us

who will never grow old.

Laughter is that inner child’s heartbeat.

Smiles and looks of wonder

are signs of life.

Fake puke isn’t very funny!

Me, BB!

I’m starting this blog because I believe people will never know the value of humor in the healing process until we learn to tell them! So far, the Hospital Clown/Compassionate Clown/Healing Power of Humor industry has not done a very good job of telling OUR story—the story of clowns who practice their craft on behalf of people who are ill or living in eldercare facilities. Yes, we talk to close friends, colleagues and relatives, but I hope this blog will speak to patients, their families, elders, medical staff, and other artists.

One thing we compassionate clowns have in common is our audience: Our audience is people who don’t want to be in the hospitals or aged-care homes where we work. Yet they really need the most effective wonder drug known to man: laughter. Like any medication, it should be dispensed by professionals – us!

Scientific studies have been done. I have read some of them and find them lacking. Anytime people write about humor and laughter in the healing process, they start talking about  the immune system, endorphins, and other things I know nothing about. I wouldn’t know an endorphin if I tripped over one! But I do know what FUN is. In this blog, I will share some real-life stories from my work as Nurse B.B., a hospital clown to children and old folks. I learned a lot walking the halls in my starched cap and size 38 shoes. So here goes:

  • First, acting stupid takes some smarts!

As a family entertainer for more than 27 years, I have studied with the very best in the business. I have learned my craft from Paris to San Francisco and points in between.  I absorbed the finer points of hospital clowning from the Big Apple Circus, where Michael Christensen started the “Clown Care” program that is in many children’s hospitals today. Teaching became part of the business because grown people wanted my advice and loved to hear my experiences. People say, “How nice – I want your job – How do you do that?”

  • Fake Puke isn’t that funny

The key to any effective medication is the proper dose. This is true with laughter, too. The key is to let it work, and don’t overdo it. Giving it in the wrong amount or at the wrong time can be damaging.

I have seen many clowns inappropriately use oversized props, rubber dog turds, fake puke, whoopee cushions, balloon animals and stickers, stuffed animals and off-color humor. All of these can be funny if you know how and WHEN to use them. Hospital clowns are taught to “read” the room, to be sensitive to the patient’s physical condition and anxieties. But traditional performing arts and family entertainment education does not properly prepare us to interact with and entertain sick, injured or life-challenged people. Clowning in hospitals and nursing homes should be a continued study. We will never have it down to a science, but there is an art to it.

Compassionate clowning, or humor for healing, is a service embedded in an experience that will last a lifetime. It’s time for us to talk about it. Here at BBClowns, I will tell what I know.