What is a Hospital Clown?
“A clown is a poet who is also an orangutan.” I don’t know where I first heard this statement, but it has stayed with me.
At first, I took it to mean that a clown must be creative and as agile as an orangutan. Then I did a little research.
Orangutans are large, gentle, intelligent apes that live mostly in trees and swing from branch to branch using their arms.
Inventive, they have been known to use found objects as tools; for example, they use leaves as umbrellas against the rain. They also use leaves as cups to help them drink water.
As the hospital clown “swings from room to room,” she applies her wit to found objects. She places a fish sticker on an I.V. bag, turning it into an aquarium. Or if the patient is about to leave the room for a walk with his I.V. on a pole, she may say, “Oh, I see you are taking your girlfriend, IVY, for a stroll.” If the patient is sitting up in bed, breathing through the mouth into a plastic cylinder with mist coming out of it, she may ask, “Say—Is that a Cuban cigar? How are you getting by with smoking in the hospital?” If she sees a triangular handle hanging from a bar over the patient’s bed, she may ask, “Hey—are you practicing acrobatics to join the circus?” For a patient waiting to be taken downstairs for an x-ray, she may offer to do a cat scan right then and there, in which case she will pull a cat mask out of her bag, put it on, and scan the patient head to toe. She applies her orangutan curiosity to everything she sees.
It has been said that a poet is one who is gifted in the perception and expression of the beautiful. I would add that a poet also sings in the dark times. We think of poets as being creative dreamers who are driven by a need to share their thoughts.
Enter, the hospital clown. This clown has a need to share love and smiles. As she goes room to room at the hospital, she has no idea what she will discover: a man without legs, a woman suffering from Alzheimer’s, a happy patient who is going home, a patient who thought he was going home but who is being transferred to a nursing home, a patient who has been waiting for too many hours for surgery, one who has returned from surgery and is still medicated, a deaf patient, a blind patient, a gentleman sitting in his chair doing cross word puzzles—well—you get the idea. In each patient she meets, she perceives beauty. That’s the poet in her.
Most people, in the course of their daily lives, do not meet orangutans, which are endangered, or poets, who are thriving, or clowns who practice their compassionate antics exclusively in hospitals.
At first, I took it to mean that a clown must be creative and as agile as an orangutan. Then I did a little research.
Orangutans are large, gentle, intelligent apes that live mostly in trees and swing from branch to branch using their arms.
Inventive, they have been known to use found objects as tools; for example, they use leaves as umbrellas against the rain. They also use leaves as cups to help them drink water.
As the hospital clown “swings from room to room,” she applies her wit to found objects. She places a fish sticker on an I.V. bag, turning it into an aquarium. Or if the patient is about to leave the room for a walk with his I.V. on a pole, she may say, “Oh, I see you are taking your girlfriend, IVY, for a stroll.” If the patient is sitting up in bed, breathing through the mouth into a plastic cylinder with mist coming out of it, she may ask, “Say—Is that a Cuban cigar? How are you getting by with smoking in the hospital?” If she sees a triangular handle hanging from a bar over the patient’s bed, she may ask, “Hey—are you practicing acrobatics to join the circus?” For a patient waiting to be taken downstairs for an x-ray, she may offer to do a cat scan right then and there, in which case she will pull a cat mask out of her bag, put it on, and scan the patient head to toe. She applies her orangutan curiosity to everything she sees.
It has been said that a poet is one who is gifted in the perception and expression of the beautiful. I would add that a poet also sings in the dark times. We think of poets as being creative dreamers who are driven by a need to share their thoughts.
Enter, the hospital clown. This clown has a need to share love and smiles. As she goes room to room at the hospital, she has no idea what she will discover: a man without legs, a woman suffering from Alzheimer’s, a happy patient who is going home, a patient who thought he was going home but who is being transferred to a nursing home, a patient who has been waiting for too many hours for surgery, one who has returned from surgery and is still medicated, a deaf patient, a blind patient, a gentleman sitting in his chair doing cross word puzzles—well—you get the idea. In each patient she meets, she perceives beauty. That’s the poet in her.
Most people, in the course of their daily lives, do not meet orangutans, which are endangered, or poets, who are thriving, or clowns who practice their compassionate antics exclusively in hospitals.
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