Their Pay’s More Than Peanuts

There are rules, of course, procedures to be followed. Keep it light, happy, split-your-pants silly.

That is your job, to make the little people laugh, giggle, smile, reach out and feel something other than sick and tired and sadder than the saddest they’ve ever been. It works on big people too.

It seems a miracle cure.

That’s why you’re here at Children’s Hospital, on your own time, the pay back being something that lasts longer than mounds of dollars and cents, something that you wouldn’t give up no matter what.

That’s what the clowns are telling me now. They’re part of Funny Business, a group of some 65 local clowns who bring their goofy grins where they’re needed most.

They are Capt. Leo (alias Leo Gentleman, mild-mannered postal employee by day), Lazlo (a.k.a. Bill Rothe, computer whiz at McDonnell Douglas) professionals Pretzel and Kritters (newlyweds Rick and Kelley--”He did a pants-drop and I was in love”--DeLung) and the little guy, Pretzel Stix, too.

( Psst . Don’t tell Stix that he’s just made of wood. Other than that, he’s a Pretzel clone.)

Except, who was it that said that rules were meant to be broken? Yuk, yuk, yuk. Groucho Marx?

So the clowns hurt too.

Not long ago, Capt. Leo was lecturing to neophyte funny people about how to clown in a hospital, about not getting hooked on the kids or it will just rip you apart. Later that afternoon, Leo was standing by Sonia’s grave.

“She was just 14 years old,” The Captain says. “The month before we were playing around, having a ball.”

“I don’t think there are any of us who hasn’t had to go over to the elevator to cry,” Pretzel says. “Every one of us has a moment when we lose it.”

“It’s when the human takes over the character,” Kritters adds. “Kritters is never sad, so when she’s there, it’s OK. It’s when Kelley takes over that I puddle. Then Kritters will have to kick in.”

Now we are making the rounds, first the general surgery floor, then oncology on three, mining for laughs and striking it rich. These kids spread their treasure around.

The cancer ward is full tonight, mostly with little boys and girls with billiard ball heads hooked up to machines that bleep in high-tech code.

Every one of these children tears off a piece of your heart.

Capt. Leo spies a newcomer in the hall, sitting in his mother’s lap. David has leukemia. He is 3 years old and he looks barely that.

David stares in the direction of this motley crew of clowns and hangers-on, his eyes opening wide. His face says he doesn’t know whether to grin or scream for someone to please call 911.

“Well, hi, David,” Leo says, gentle and slow. “Can I sit on the floor over here?”

David gives him a look, confused, than snuggles deeper into his mother’s arms. The Captain, never one to be ignored, scoots closer, sliding on his rear.

“Well, I’ve got big feet too !” Leo is saying to his new friend now.

A smile sneaks across David’s face, then a shy laugh and before long, he’s reaching for the balloon dog that Leo is twisting into shape. Who can say who’s having more fun?

“He’s one of the best working with children who are clownaphobic,” Kritters tells me in an aside. “He does this all the time. He’s taught us all.”

The food bit, for instance. It’s more than a simple gag.

Erin, who’s 10, is in her room, looking morose. Her dinner, untouched, is on the tray across her bed.

Leo takes it, says he’s going to eat it all up!

“Uh-oh, the food police!” Pretzel says. (Or was that Stix? Sometimes it’s hard to tell.)

“Hey, bring that back!” Erin says.

“Well, can I have half ?” Leon asks.

“No!” comes the response, with a smile. Erin eats after that.

Once the bit worked wonders on a little boy who hadn’t eaten in two days. The nurses told Leo a month later about what his clowning had done.

“I remember one time, a father came out and asked me if I could come in a room, that his son hadn’t been able to eat,” Kritters says.

“The little boy was really sick, and he kept spitting up his food. Really, it was almost too much for me to handle. I called in Pretzel and after a while, the little boy was able to eat. I got the father to smile and then he broke into tears. It felt so good. The father needed to relieve his tension too.”

The clown parade clomps on down the hall, then into a room that soon fills with children dragging their portable IVs, a traffic jam of wheels and cords punctuated with beeps.

Leo creates balloon animals, joking with any and all that happen by. Lazlo, Pretzel and Stix are concocting a jumble of delight. Kritters and her opossum, Awesome, are at a pint-sized table, drawing silly pictures for what are now giggling little girls. Parents and hospital staff crowd in wherever they can.

You’ve heard the phrase “What a circus!” before.

Marjan, who’s 8 years old, draws Awesome a picture and hands it to him (her? it?) with a big grin.

Heather, a 4-year-old beauty even without any hair, is bubbling over with all sorts of things to say to Awesome and Kritters and Capt. Leo too. Her mother, Francie Stevens, has a camera in hand.

“Boy, anymore and you have to bring your camera to chemo or you miss all the good shots!” she says.

Hospital volunteer Linda Barrett is looking on when I turn to her and suggest that we may be in for a good cry.

“That’s what I was thinking,” she says. “It makes my heart hurt . . . but all of this helps me more than anything else. All the parents ask about the other kids. They all have such great attitudes. They are all so positive.”

Which, of course, you have to be. Remember the rules, the procedures to follow and maybe you wouldn’t go out of control. Isn’t that what the clowns said early on?

When 5-year-old Katie, a bone marrow transplant patient in intensive care, holds her Jiminy Cricket against the glass of her room to give Capt. Leo a kiss, you smile and hold that image inside.

When her mother comes out to tell the clowns that they’ve made her daughter’s day, and her week, that the only enjoyment they get these days comes from taking a bath, you know that somebody’s doing good.

Then, before you leave, you ask Capt. Leo if he wouldn’t mind making a balloon dog for your own little girl, the one who’s asleep at home, safe and well. Later you put it beside her bed and you give her a kiss.

Then you thank God there are clowns to make people laugh, and to make people cry.