Make 'em laugh

By LOIS BAKER
News Services Editor

Lynch, the son of a Louisville endocrinologist, aspired to be a humor therapist, but couldn't find a college that offered a curriculum. Instead, he earned a "Bachelor of Fun Arts" from the Ringling Brothers Clown College in Sarasota, Fla.

Wearing baggy pants, oversized clodhoppers and tufts of orange hair, he has become a therapist without portfolio, delivering his message that mirth is medicine to hospitals and medical schools along the route of The Greatest Show on Earth.

Oct. 30 while the circus was in town, Lynch visited UB to praise the mirthful experience and to show and tell medical students how laughter can make their job easier.

His primary message was that laughter heals, and while medicine is serious business most of the time, it doesn't have to be serious all of the time. The aerialist doesn't crack wise while he's walking the tightrope, Lynch noted, but when he reaches the opposite platform, the jokes fly.

"It's OK to play," the clown said. Lynch's slapstick routine that gets him all tangled up in a physician's white coat may be beyond the talents or inclinations of most, but a doctor can easily slip-on Groucho glasses to inspect a set of X-rays or trade a joke-a-day with long-term patients.

He demonstrated how to pretend to snap your nose with a rubber glove and showed how to play radio-talk-show-host with a stethoscope. He used an otoscope to see CNN in a kid's ear, and popped a tongue depressor into his mouth like a lollipop.

Acknowledging that humor isn't appropriate in every circumstance, Lynch offered some guidelines to follow:

· "Be sensitive to the patient's situation. If she just lost her hair through chemotherapy, don't start telling bald jokes."

· "Don't alienate with humor; we all know this can happen."

· "Stop if it's not helping you do your work."

"And don't say, "Hi! "I'm Doctor Ke-vorkian," Lynch quipped. "I can't think of a time when that would be appropriate."