Have you ever been in a situation where it was inappropriate to laugh, but something struck you as humorous? Example: many, many years ago, when I was an altar boy assisting a priest during communion, I thought it was funny to see all these reverent churchgoers kneeling and sticking their tongues out. It was all I could do to keep myself from giggling.
It was at a funeral. The man who had died was called Chuckles the Clown. All my friends from the office were there. They were sad, but I couldn’t help but laugh.
Then someone said Chuckles would’ve wanted it that way; for all to be happy. Then I cried.
I laughed hystarically when my son kept telling the nurses and doctors not to drop him when moving him from one exam bed to the next.
It might have been shock on my part. Although it was highly inappropriate since he was just hit by a car.
All I could do was laugh and tell him that they wouldn’t drop him and to relax.
Another thing was while he was still in the hospital his bio-dad called up to the room and asked if he was still there! Duh!
At one point during a bible study/discussion while in High School (yes, I have since quit, but I was required to attend for a while) I had one of those moments.
It was a discussion on women in the bible, and what was currently being discussed was Mary Magdelene. Now, since I had been reading information on these sorts of subjects, I was acutely aware of the theory that Mary Magdelene and Jesus were lovers. The “leader” of this discussion - a fine, if not completely bright man who I will call Ken (because that is his name)- was expounding on the section where it refers to Jesus driving out 7 demons from Mary.
He apparently thought this would be a good time to share a certain story about when he had witnessed an excorcism himself. To quote a particular section of his story …“the excorcism was almost violent, the subject was flailing about crying - the priest had to hold him down while he was administering the rites, to get right on top of him and hold him down while he was flailing about and crying out…”
This continued on in this vein for several minutes. Eventually I had to leave and “go to the bathroom” where I was finally able to a massive fit of the giggles.
When I was growing up, my sister, mom and I were experts at suppressing laughter.
Family vacations were always a little tense until we arrived at our destination. When dad was behind the wheel, he took things waaaay to seriously.
I especially remember one trip when I was about 8 or 9. This was before the energy crisis – when dad knew that people who drove “furrin cars” were unpatriotic and morally deficient (he later learned to despise and pity Detroit like every good American, but that’s another story). Besides, he knew they were all inferior products compared to our magnificent domestic chromed mountains. After all, they were built by foreigners! [GASP!]
We were driving on the 2-lane road that used to lead out of Kings Canyon national park when a little VW Beetle tried to pass our (12-year-old) 1956 Cadillac Sedan De Ville. Dad tromped down on the gas, exclaiming “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna be passed by a furrin car!”
We drew ahead of the Beetle and it fell in line behind us. A short time later, the Caddy was running roughly and starting to overheat as we climbed the steep road. It was hot, and at that altitude, the “Queen Mary”, as we had named the old beast, would vaporlock if we stopped for any reason. Just then, the little Beetle pulled out and passed us like we were going backwards.
Dad’s shoulders hunched and the veins on his neck stood out. He turned several shades of red, each deeper and more improbable than the last. His knuckles turned white as he strangled the steering wheel.
Mom looked out the window to keep from laughing, or even showing dad the least bit of a smile of amusement. My sister and I alternated between staring at our feet and grinning at each other.
The rest of the ride to the top of the canyon was silent.
–Baloo
P.S.: Dad eventually mellowed out as he aged, and even owned a few “furrin cars” himself.
Before my current job, I used to take the bus to work. (Didn’t have a car) I used to read the Straight Dope and More of the Straight Dope on the bus, and laugh (it may not be inappropriate to laugh on the bus, but I try not to do when sitting by myself, even if I’m obviously reading, because of the strange looks I can get).
(As if I don’t get strange looks now…anyway)
I was an usher at a wedding about 3-4 years ago. They had candles hanging from the “wedding arch” or whatever that thing is called. (I don’t know anything about weddings, or for that matter, women, which is probably why I don’t know anything about the former)
Anyway, at one point in the ceremony, the damned thing caught on fire! It was put out and calm was restored, but the best man, in the middle of the ceremony, nudged me and took his lighter out of his pocket and gestured as if he was going to light the arch again. I probably injured some of my internal organs trying to restrain myself from laughing.
Finally, I have this masochistic tendency to remember funny things during serious moments, business meetings, etc.
I often laughed when arguing with my ex-wife if she turned teary. It was so unlike her, I was laughing with surprise. Always cost me though.
I was in 9th grade gym class: all girls, but the teacher was a man. I guess we had all been cutting up, so he made up all sit down so he could read the riot act. In the middle of his harangue, one girl raised her hand and said, “Can I get a drink of water?” I immediately busted out laughing, he dismissed me, and the tile walls magnified the sound of my whooping and giggling all the way out.
Years ago I was drafted to be in a friend’s wedding as an usher. He and his bride were very religious, and had a minister to do the deed who threw in all sorts of stuff I would have never thought of. I was fine until the minister came out with something about being in “God’s artillery”–my mind immediately made a leap from that to the old saying about how God is always on the side of the biggest battalions. This struck me as hilarious, so I had to bite my tongue hard to keep from cackling.
Then there was the time I was driving home from college during spring break–I had a deer jump in front of me on the interstate and disembowel itself on my car’s grill. A passerby stoped and agreed to call the police for me. When the state cop got there I was standing at the front of my car, morosely watching the broken radiator spew antifreeze. “Is that the deer you hit?” he asked, pointing to the mangled corpse a ways back. This struck me as funny–it was the only dead deer in the area–but I restrained myself. Then he pointed to the grill and the dribbling antifreeze. “Is that the damage from the deer?” he asked. The reply which bubbled up to the top of my mind was “No, I got pissed off and kicked the damn thing to death!” I didn’t say it, and I didn’t laugh…but it was a near thing.
I laughed all the way through the ceramony when I got married the first time. Couldn’t help it.
At my high school graduation (it was an arts school), they were showing this video of all the art areas, people demonstrating what they do, why it means a lot to them. Apparently, it was really emotionl, because a lot of girls were crying, but the video had this one theater kid doing this skit in a kitchen set, and he kinda stops and talks to the toaster, and all I could think about was that Kids In The Hall Skit–“Oh yeah, Toaster! What’s cooking? Sex! That’s what!”–and I started laughing hysterically. I felt awful, but once I pointed out to people what I was laughing at, they thought it was funny, to. Not as funny as I did, though.
During boring classes, rather than fall asleep at my desk as I used to, I started bringing a book to read. Not only does it keep me awake, but I like to think the prof might think I’m reading one of the books he assigned. During a class this past fall semester, me sitting like two seats away from the prof, the book I chose to keep me awake was naked by David Sedaris. I was in the True Detective story in the collection when it just got too funny to contain myself and I burst out laughing . . . not appropriate at all to the very serious material discussed in class (whatever that may have been 
)
A couple different times in the Air Force:
We were at a Commander’s Call, and awards were being presented and medals passed out. Everyone was standing at attention and the commander was reading off a list of one of our Sgt’s accomplishments. He went through about 5 very serious, important sounding things, and then I heard the words, “. . . and he was the voice of McGruff the Crime Dog for . . .”
If you’ve been in the service you know you do not laugh while standing at attention, but I couldn’t help myself. I started giggling, trying to hold it back as best I could, then I heard my friend Tom next to me start giggling. I glanced over, saw how red he was and biting his lip to keep from laughing, and I lost my composure. This set off a chain reaction, and soon nearly half the squadron was laughing at McGruff the Crime Dog.
The other time, also in the AF, when during an Honor Guard detail. We were doing the military honors at a funeral; serving as pallbearers, 21 gun salute, folding and presenting the flag to the widow. It had rained the night before and instead of having the ceremony at a military cemetary (where the casket is placed under a pavilion and moved later to the actual burial site), the man was being buried at a civilian cemetary and we were directly over the open hole. Because of the last night’s rain, after we set the casket down and did our right face, the person across from me slipped and fell into the grave.
I knew it was the worst time to laugh, but all I could think of was if it had been me who slipped. I was thinking about being in the grave, knocking on the bottom of the casket, pretending to be the dead man, yeling, “Hey, Let me out of the box! I’ll be good, I promise! I’m not quite dead yet!”
You know when your Dad is really lacing into you about some stupid thing you did?
I was really catching it bad(my friends busted something)…I didn’t think i deserved it, so I stared balnkly at the wall…I dind’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t swallow…nothing for a good 2-3 minutes (yes it was hard).
All of a sudden he says: “you wipe that god’dam dead makeral look off of your face”
I damn near wet myself trying not to laugh. It’s a good thing he left when he did, otherwise I would have ruptured my sleen.
Well, one time my friend dislocated her shoulder on a moonbounce…it was a very bad situation, since she was in a lot of pain and kept telling us to hurry and get her to the hospital. Even though it took us an hour or so to get her shoulder set, and it was early in the morning, everyone there couldn’t help but laugh. It wasn’t like a mocking type laughter, more of an ironic “Man, this sucks” type laugh.
The most recent time was at my fathers funeral.
We hired a non-denominational priest to do the ceremony. We were all terribly distraught at the loss of my father.
Nonetheless, when my brother and I caught sight of the priest’s white shoes/belt and circa 1976 suit, we started to bust a gut!
It certainly lightened our moods to carry on through the whole day, not to mention the fact that our father would’ve done the same 
-Sam
Several years ago my bosses mother passed away. The funeral procession started to the ceremony and I think the driver must’ve been new. He would speed and then slow down. We spent the entire drive speeding to catch up with the front cars. To make things worse, we came upon a train stopped on the tracks. We waited a couple of minutes to see if it moved and when it didn’t, the entire procession of about 40 cars had to make a u-turn and go a different way. By the time we got to the cemetary, I was crying from trying not to laugh.
The following week my boss cracked a joke about the whole thing. She said it was something that her mother would’ve really appreciated.
Peaches, I was there too with my dreamy boyfriend, Ed Asner under his secret agent name, Lou Grant. You would never guess which one I was though.
HUGS!
Sqrl