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Jim Gamble presented a video of a puppet show he did at Long Beach Memorial Miller Children’s Hospital in about 1994.  He had been invited there by a flight attendant to visit Joey, a cancer patient there.  Jim created a hand puppet clown, “Ruffles”, who would ask a group of the children about their shots, chemotherapy, and medical procedures they had experienced in the hospital.  The children spoke with the puppet with more frankness and confidence than they could have if speaking directly with an adult.

The children listened to the puppet’s chest with a stethoscope, checked his throat with a tongue blade, and described their hospital experiences in their own words.  They talked about undergoing bone marrow sampling, lying on a radiation table, or showing him their artificial leg prosthesis.  They were remarkably cheerful in spite of their medical problems and the scary feeling of being away from home in a strange hospital.

Joey was older than most of the other children.  During the filming, he grabbed the mike and took over the show, stating, “Now I’m in charge, so I’ll interview Ruffles!”  The clown asked Joey a (dumb) question, “What’s the smartest thing in the world?  A Thermos bottle — it keeps hot things hot and cold things cold!”  Joey responded, “But how does it know which it is?”

A few months later, Jim was doing a puppet show at the Jonathan Club in Los Angeles.  One of the men recognized him and introduced himself, stating he was the father of Joey.  The father stated he had had a hard time letting Joey go (Joey had died), so he often put the video cassette on the player in the evening to help him remember Joey, and fall asleep listening to it.  One night before falling asleep, the father heard Joey again responding to that dumb joke, and stating that he was a lucky kid with good parents and excellent care, and that no matter what, he felt that he could handle it!  At that point, the father said, he could finally let Joey go.  Jim Gamble finally realized the value of that special friendship he had made there in the hospital with Joey; you can’t predict how much your actions can mean to someone!