“I guess you don’t like surprises,” I say with fake resignation. I introduce myself and then suddenly shout out, “Who likes surprises?” capturing everyone’s attention. Each child has been given his or her very own Freddy Rocker Gem Show tee shirt, a baseball hat, two balloons, and a stuffed animal. the Freddy Rocker Gem Show officially begins. As I look around the room, though, and see the bandages, intravenous feeding tubes, and wheelchairs, I am quickly brought back to the reality of time and place.Īt approximately 6:30 p.m. Forgetting where I am for a moment, I think that I have been plunked down into the middle of a children’s slumber party. Nurses, volunteers, grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters, and the patients themselves in pajamas and bathrobes fill the room, perhaps fifty or sixty people in all. We create a spectacle moving through the hospital corridors with all of these balloons.Īt approximately 6 p.m.
When I am “suited up,” volunteers help me transport all of the props and gifts, including 100 helium-filled Freddy Rocker Gem Show balloons, to the children’s theatre. I put on my Freddy Rocker Gem Show tee shirt and a baseball cap with a red Freddy Rocker logo. I arrive at the hospital about 5:15 p.m., stopping first at the volunteer office, where I check in with the staff and pick up all my materials. Freddy Rocker first appeared in the hospital almost forty years ago. This is the children’s theatre, officially called the “Patient Entertainment Center.” Volunteers, some world-famous and some unknown except to those who spend their days and nights in this hospital, come here to entertain the children: magicians, folk singers, and storytellers. On the mezzanine level of the hospital is a large open area with a performance stage. I go from the world where everything has a price to the world where only one value exists, the life of a child. I leave the world of commerce and enter the world of the heart. I make a dramatic change of persona, from Fred Feldmesser, gem dealer and private jeweler, to Freddy Rocker, uninhibited Mythical Rock Man. When I walk through the glass doors of Children’s Hospital in Boston, one of the most important pediatric medical centers in the United States, I am like Clark Kent jumping into a telephone booth.
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