The Humor Code

by Peter McGraw

  Pete gets into the action, too, albeit from a different direction. Because these projects are all about clowns letting loose their inner child in environments that are none too hospitable to any kind of children, someone has to be there to look out for them, to make sure they don’t fall into sewage pits or pass out from dehydration or get kidnapped by Amazonian gangsters. Someone who thrives on responsibility and order, someone who’s always thinking about what might go wrong. So Pete retires his red nose and becomes one of the civilian guides assigned to watch over the clowns.

  Pete comes along as one of the civilian guides when we travel to a mental hospital on the outskirts of Iquitos one afternoon. While most of us clown around in a tree-dotted courtyard, dancing and playing catch with giggling patients, Pete shadows a blue-haired Argentinian clown named Ramiro as he explores the hospital’s rudimentary living quarters. In a bare, dingy room, Ramiro finds an old woman cowering in her bed, covers drawn over her face. As Pete watches from a window, Ramiro sits on the edge of her bed and begins playing his harmonica. After a while, he stops. “Move your foot if you like the music,” he says in Spanish. A foot wiggles beneath the blanket. He continues to play.

  This continues for 30, 40 minutes—Pete watching from the window, Ramiro playing his harmonica, the woman lying in her bed. As time passes, a face emerges from beneath the blanket. Finally, when it’s time to go, the woman rises from the bed and clasps Ramiro in a long, silent hug.

  Later, when we all meet for a debriefing session at an open-air bar near our hotel, Pete raises his hand to speak. “I didn’t know a lot about clowns before I came here. But I saw a lot of beautiful things today.” His voice cracks with emotion. “What you’re doing is really important.”

  A big, matronly Argentinian clown named Lorena leaps from her seat and wraps Pete in her arms. “Bienvenidos al grupo de payasos,” she says as she squeezes him tight. “Welcome to our clown family.”

  About halfway through the trip, Pete and I realize we’re having a lot of fun. And that doesn’t make any sense.

  We’re not grumbling about the lack of fresh vegetables in our repetitive meals of fried fish and hamburgers. Or the National Geographic–worthy world of critters that infest our beds each night. Or that our hotel room is draped with sweat-damp clothes that never fully dry in the sticky heat.

  “If this were just the two of us . . .” I say to Pete one morning.

  “. . . we’d be freakin’ miserable,” he replies, finishing my sentence.

  But it’s not just the two of us—we’re surrounded by people even more crazily upbeat than we are. The clowns here are not at all like the hammy, squirting-flower bozos we’d imagined, the sort of clock-punching performers who transform into beaten-down old men once their clown shifts are over. Instead, they’re as energetic and loving and generous as a company of young evangelicals, never ceasing to clown around with everyone they see. So why aren’t we all miserable? Maybe it’s because we’re too busy clowning around to focus on how miserable we should be. Humor and coping, after all, seem to go hand in hand. Successful humor inspires all sorts of positive feelings and emotions, which can act as a psychological buffer when things go wrong. Not only that, but as we’ve learned, humor is all about shifting one’s perspective, reassessing situations, and, as Pete would say, transforming violations into benign violations. So by cracking jokes about our Peruvian bedbugs and gross clown clothes, we’d found the perfect way to keep our spirits up, not to mention defuse what would otherwise be a total bummer.

  Over the years, several compelling studies have suggested that these theories aren’t just theories, that humor and coping really are intertwined. In one especially touching experiment, researchers interviewed a group of widowers six months after the death of their spouses. Those able to smile and laugh about their marriage during this time of lingering sadness had fewer problems with grief and depression in the years that followed.10

  There’s also evidence connecting humor and coping from the USS Pueblo incident in North Korea, courtesy of all those POWs flashing Hawaiian peace signs at their captors. When researchers examined the 82 survivors once they’d been released from captivity, they found that those who best handled the ordeal relied on a variety of defense mechanisms such as faith, denial, and, yes, humor.11

  This research is a step in the right direction, says Pete, but when it comes to data like this from the real world, there’s a hitch: none of it proves that humor is a coping mechanism. These studies are correlational. It’s unclear whether the humor helped people cope with their hardships, or whether the people who were already better equipped to cope with adversity had an easier time joking about their problems.

  That’s why psychology researchers are turning to wonderfully devious lab experiments to untangle the relationship between humor and coping. In one study, researchers had participants narrate a thirteen-minute safety video featuring dramatized versions of grisly wood-mill accidents. Those asked to come up with a humorous narration reported less stress afterward than those who described it seriously, and readings of skin conductance, heart rate, and skin temperature suggested the comic narrators were less physiologically stressed, too. (Unfortunately, the subsequent paper didn’t include examples of how the narrators came up with quips about industrial ripsaws.)12

  Not surprisingly, sadistic research like this appeals to Pete. He’s especially interested in what he calls humorous complaining. As we know, tragedies big and small can lead to comedy, so humor can be a common outcome of stuff worth grumbling about—a missed flight, an unfair parking ticket, a crummy meal at a high-priced restaurant. Pete, in collaboration with graduate students Christina Kan and Caleb Warren, scrutinized hundreds of business ratings on Yelp.com. They found that negative reviews, especially those accompanying one-star ratings, were rated by other consumers to be significantly funnier than positive reviews. But Pete believes griping in a humorous way is not only natural, it’s beneficial. It makes the complainer feel better than if they just grumbled negatively, and it makes other people feel better about the complainer, too. Pete is hoping to prove this by subjecting people to painful situations and having them complain humorously about it. While research is still in progress, all I know is that when Pete had me stick my hand in a bucket of ice water for five minutes, all the going-down-with-the-Titanic jokes I cracked didn’t stop my right pinkie from feeling numb for weeks.13

  We don’t need any buckets of ice water here in Peru to appreciate the connection between humor and coping. We see it everywhere thanks to all the clowns. Their shenanigans don’t just help the residents of Belén deal with their problems. They help the clowns cope, too.

  Gesundheit Global Outreach director Glick is the yin to Patch Adams’s yang. While Patch is rowdy and provocative, Glick is gentle and serene. There’s always a peaceful smile below his well-worn clown nose, always a few supportive words to pass along. He’s so full of bliss that we’re surprised when Patch summons everyone to the hotel lobby one night for a special “clown healing” for Glick. It’s only once everyone has arranged themselves in a wide circle in the lobby and Glick stands in the center that I notice that Glick’s right hand is trembling. The problems started four years ago, he tells us, his smile never fading. “Something funny happened with my hand,” he says, gazing at his shaking fingers. He asked a neurologist friend what was going on. The man looked him in the eyes and said, “This is Parkinson’s disease.”

  As a physician and acupuncturist, Glick had worked with people with Parkinson’s, people who couldn’t keep still, who couldn’t talk, couldn’t swallow. “What is it like in there?” he wonders out loud. “Trapped inside this body that won’t let you do what you want it to do?” I look over at Patch and realize he’s weeping, wiping his eyes on the sleeve of his fluorescent-colored shirt.

  “There are two of me now,” continues Glick. “My ego is on this side,” he says, pointing to his left side, the side that doesn’t shake. “I am in control here. I like to be in contro
l. I’ve spent my whole life wanting to be in more control.” But, he adds with a smile, “My shaking side has a different agenda. My shaking side tells me to let go. My shaking side says, ‘This is my soul.’ And what happens when I let go is Patch comes to me.” He looks at his old friend. “And Santiago comes to me.” He glances at another clown in the circle. “And Paula and Kelly and Anya and David and Shlomo and Levi . . .” He looks in turn at each clown. There’s hardly a dry eye in the room.

  Patch enters the circle and places his arms on Glick’s shoulders. “I think clowning is special healing magic,” he says. And he wants us to give Glick some of that magic all at once. “Like electrocution.”

  Patch has Glick lie on the floor and asks everyone to crowd in close, resting their hands on his arms, legs, head, all over his body. Then Patch and others begin to sing: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound . . .” Here’s Patch Adams, a guy who doesn’t believe in religion, belting out one of the most impassioned versions of “Amazing Grace” I’ve ever heard.

  When the song is over, there’s one last procedure to perform. “Wiggle your fingers at Glick,” Patch commands. “Boogiewoogiewoogie!” holler 100 clowns, waggling away.

  “That,” concludes Patch, “is clown healing.”

  I don’t see it coming. No one does. On our last day in the Amazon, there’s a full-fledged clown emergency. And I’m stuck in the middle of it.

  In the world of Gesundheit, Carl Hammerschlag looms large. Two decades ago, Hammerschlag, a six-foot-six Yale-trained psychiatrist, heard Patch speak at a dental conference, and he’s been clowning with the man ever since. Here in the Amazon, the 73-year-old Hammerschlag, who’s more often than not wearing a pink tutu and tights, has assumed the role of “street psychiatrist.” He’s assembled a rag-tag group of clowns who in their normal lives work in therapy, nursing, chiropractic, and other health professions, and he’s staging medical clinics in various neighborhoods devastated by the flooding.

  That morning in Iquitos, I tag along with Hammerschlag’s clinic, dressed in my now-well-worn clown outfit. A squadron of motor taxis deposits us at our location for the day: Punchana, a poor neighborhood at the edge of Iquitos hard hit by the floods. As a gray, overcast sky looms overhead, we make our way down rutted, muddy streets strewn with trash and debris, past houses bowing precariously on waterlogged stilts. In some places, homes have collapsed altogether. The scene resembles a war zone.

  We set up shop in Punchana’s central plaza: a bedraggled, puddle-strewn square of dirt with rough-hewn soccer goals at each end. Another organization is working here, too, a grassroots veterinary clinic. Families begin to wander in—far more than expected. Crowds press in tightly around the volunteers handing out free vitamins. Therapists struggle to find a quiet corner to host ten-minute, one-on-one therapy sessions with residents. The air is filled with the howls of local dogs being spayed and neutered in full view in the veterinary tent. The situation is spiraling out of control, and it’s made worse by the dozens upon dozens of children lured to the plaza by the commotion, running about and getting in everyone’s way.

  “Somebody’s gotta do something about the kids,” says Hammerschlag in his deep, commanding voice. He looks to the only two clowns who aren’t working at the clinic: me, and an older guy named Mark. We know what we have to do.

  On the far side of the plaza, we get to work. As nearly 100 children gather about, I pull out every gag, game, and prank from my limited bag of clown tricks. I dash about the square, splashing through the mud as I grab squealing tykes around the waist and lug them under my arm like I’m running a football play down the field. I stage bullfights with my ratty handkerchief, hollering, “Toro! Toro!” as I twirl about the charging tykes. I borrow another clown’s face-painting crayons and begin decorating forearms, the children crushing around me and demanding in Spanish for their tattoo of choice: “Flor!” “Mariposa!” “Anaconda!” “Corazón!”

  Eventually, Mark and I scramble onto a nearby porch and begin fashioning rudimentary balloon animals. We assemble endless flowers, swords, and poodles and toss them to the screaming horde below, working until our bag of 100-plus balloons is empty. And still, the children keep coming. And coming. And coming.

  Three hours later, as the clinic winds down and the tidal wave of kids subsides, my clown clothes are in tatters. My Hawaiian shirt is ripped beyond repair; my polka-dot tie dangles from my neck, having been yanked far too many times. I should be exhausted, but I’m also elated.

  Hammerschlag comes up to me. “That was a stroke of clown genius,” he exclaims, beaming. We kept the kids occupied, but we also did something else: “You presented the message that in the middle of all this trauma, we can still find a way to play.”

  Just as my clowning in Punchana worked in conjunction with the efforts of the medical clinic, Pete’s come to believe that humor is most helpful when it’s combined with other approaches to health. Maybe it’s a doctor working a few jokes into a checkup routine, or a hospital integrating a clown program into its children’s ward, or people weaving a good sense of humor into a lifestyle geared toward happiness and well-being. It’s like how physicians recommend exercise and a nutritious diet as part of a healthy daily routine. Maybe it’s time they start telling their patients to have a little more fun in their lives.

  “Humor is not the only tool,” concludes Pete, “but it is an important tool in the tool kit.” It’s a lesson we’ll take home with us from the Amazon—along with potentially something else.

  Not long after we depart Peru, we receive a message from John Rock, one of the Gesundheit organizers. Apparently right after we left, skin rashes and excessive itching broke out among the clowns who remained, causing dozens to be quarantined.

  “You probably have scabies,” Rock tells us. “Clowns are the best!”

  A week after we return from the Amazon, Pete gets a call from the police. His mother, Kathleen, has been found dead in her home in New Jersey.

  The news is sudden, but not unexpected. Pete’s mom had been in and out of hospitals for years, struggling with pain and health problems, and rejected nearly all attempts at help. As Pete would put it in her obituary, “Kathy lived life the way she wanted, with determination and spirit.” As a single mother, that tenacity helped her survive and rubbed off on her only son, inspiring him to pursue his own idiosyncratic route in life. But it also made her increasingly difficult to get along with. By the time of her death, Pete had become her primary caregiver, as no one else in his family maintained regular contact with her.

  “Taking care of my mom has been one of my biggest challenges, and it’s also one of the things I’m most proud of,” Pete tells me. Even though she lived nearly 2,000 miles away, she was always in the back of his mind, like a stereo speaker that always has a slight, constant hum, whether or not music is playing. That hum could be concerns that surfaced at night as he lay in bed, or a voice mail message from her on his phone that might or might not be bad news. “And now,” he tells me, “for better and worse, that hum is gone.”

  In lieu of a funeral, Pete flies to New Jersey to scatter his mother’s ashes at her favorite beach, accompanied by his sister Shannon. Pete shares a similar and sometimes twisted sense of humor with his sister, which came in handy during a childhood that wasn’t always easy. And it comes in handy now. During their drive from their mother’s house to the Jersey Shore, the two crack up over shared memories, like how for family trips to the beach, their mother would pack their Ford Pinto so full of coolers, umbrellas, and boogie boards it was a wonder there was any space left for the three of them. Or how, to save money, their mother often wouldn’t buy admission tags for her kids to play at the shore, which meant that whenever she’d spot beach employees wandering down the sand, she’d send Pete and Shannon into the ocean and tell them to stay there until the workers were out of sight.

  When Pete and Shannon arrive at the beach that day, they stand at the water’s edge on a quiet stretch of sand, taking turns sprinkli
ng ashes into the waves. Pete also tosses in a colorful bracelet he purchased in Peru, a present he was unable to give his mom. It’s a quiet, tearful moment, but then Pete gets a sudden urge to lighten the mood.

  “Make sure you get everything,” he tells his sister as she scatters the remaining ashes. “Don’t leave behind a toe.”

  “That was wrong, but it was funny,” Pete tells me later. They both needed the levity, and it helped make for what turned out to be a touching and pleasant afternoon.

  Pete doesn’t feel bad about using jokes to help him deal with his grief. If there’s one thing our time in the Amazon with a bunch of clowns has taught us, it’s that in difficult situations, humor can help.

  No, laughter can’t live up to all the claims put forward by Norman Cousins and his disciples. It’s not going to reverse a degenerative disease, stop a heart attack, or cure cancer. But while science doesn’t yet support the idea that humor improves people’s physical health, there is evidence that it improves emotional health. As we’ve found, it helps people cope with their problems, it distracts from dispiriting thoughts, it creates an escape from what ails you, whether that be the loss of a loved one, a diagnosis of Parkinson’s, a lifetime of suffering in a place like Belén, or just a crummy day. While that’s not the same as lowering blood pressure or jump-starting the immune system, improving your outlook can be a good thing.

  Yes, says Pete, Patch is right: laughter is not the best medicine. But he’s convinced that laughter is medicine, even if it’s not the best.

  That’s why I plan to keep my clown nose handy. Just in case of emergencies.