I remembered something today that caused me to burst out laughing while walking down the street. People that saw me must have thought I spontaneously went made, but daggone it, it makes me laugh and it shouldn’t.
Years ago, and by years I mean circa 1982-83, my cousin “Mooney” and I ate at Shakey’s Pizza. I haven’t seen a Shakey’s for years so I assume they went under, but anyway, we were done and got in my car. We were parked right outside the door facing the entrance. As we got into the car we saw a family coming out with a takeout order. Mom, Dad and junior, who was probably around 6 or 7 years old. Junior was carrying the pizza, because, you know, kids love to do that (“I wanna carry it! I wanna carry it!”). Junior had the box open though, because, well, kids love to look at pizzas I guess. But he tripped. And fell face down on the still hot pizza.
Mooney busted out laughing…which despite myself, made me laugh. Junior was crying and when he raised up he had gooey cheese and pepperonis stuck to his face…which made Mooney laugh even harder. We were in the car but he was laughing so hard i thought he was going to suffocate. Admittedly the sight of Junior with peperoni and chese on his face made me laugh just as hard. I couldn’t stop laughing either because Mooney was litterally shaking the car with laughter and between guffaws saying “look! look!” with barely any breath. This fueled my laughter and both of us were on the verge of passing out from lack of air.
I finally thought I had my laughter in control when Mooney…who was still cracking up in that shaking “make it stop” kind of way says “LOOK!”. I turn and see that he’s pointing at the car next to us. (on his side). The family was in there and mom had the itty-bittiest handy wipe known to mankind and was wiping the cheese off of Junior’s face. I swear it had Pepperonis stuck to it. For some reason this made us both roar into even more laughter! Screaming, uncontrollable laughter. Both parents shot us dirty looks but we couldn’t stop. I even gasped out “That…guy…is going to…kill us!!!”. But that didn’t help us stop laughing. We must have been there ten minutes after they pulled out laughing, tears streaming down our face. God, my ribs hurt from that.
Its a mean thing to laugh at but dammit, when I think about it today it makes me laugh. The only thing that makes not feel like a super-jerk about it is if you remind Mooney about it he laughs even harder.
One year when the Hallkids were little, we went with a friend to a church service for Christmas. It was the year that Hallgirl 1 had some pretty big hair, and the service at some point, had candles that we were all to hold (while lit) and sing some song. Well, you guessed it, Hallgirl’s bangs (heavily hair sprayed no less) went poof and she says, “Mom, my hair in on fire!” By the time I looked, the flame was gone, but her hair (properly crisped) was smoldering and stank, even though she wasn’t hurt physically. (Burnt hair smells horrible!) I lost it, and snorted and giggled for the next ten minutes, until I snuck out the back of the church. It was years until I set foot in another church.
Yeah, I’ll win the worst mom of the year award for that year, but just thinking about the incident makes me smile like a lunatic.
We used to have this full on crazy resident and the nursing home that was on dialysis, and was on a fluid restriction. This resident was a total nut, pulled the port out of her own neck…twice, just for fun and so on. But anyway, she would keep asking for water and keep asking because she knew she couldn’t have it. If you did give it to her, she would throw it at you. On night she was really on a bender, yelling and running around, she asked for a drink and I said no. She runs over to the buffet table and grabs like four packages of Mrs. Dash and pours all of it in her mouth, runs to me and goes “PPPPLLLLLEEaasssee give me a drink!” spewing Mrs. Dash everywhere. I know she had to be really wanting a drink then, that stuff has a lot of pepper flavor in it, but I just feel out laughing. To this day if I smell Mrs. Dash I chuckle.
Every middle school band concert my son was in. His older sister Whiterabbit and I would sit there choking on our laughter because it really wasn’t nice to laugh at the kids’ efforts. But ye gods, they were awful! We would crawl out of the concerts and go sit in the car and laugh till we choked.
So I guess you’ve got competition for the worst mom of the year award, phall0106.
One of my very good friends wants to be a human rights activist and is involved with all sorts of groups and crap that help people. She is especially interested in Africa and AIDS, so when the movie Team America came out, she was telling me about how she had seen it with a bunch of her friends from Amnesty or a similar group.
So we were walking down the sidewalk and she says “We all didn’t like it.” then she stops, looks me straight in the eye, and tells me “They made fun of AIDS.”
I felt bad about laughing right in her face, but the image of a bunch of humorless college hipsters all being ghastly offended by that movie really struck me as quite amusing.
My best friend has a bone disease. Her left leg is considerably shorter than the right, and she has to wear a built-up shoe to compensate. She still walks with sort of a swaying limp, though.
We were walking through a parking lot when she tripped over a concrete parking barrier. Struggling to keep her balance, she charged forward, bent at the waist and plowed into a parked pickup truck. She hit it with the crown of her head, bashing into it so hard that she left a dent.
I managed to ask her if she was okay before I lost it. Luckily, she found it funny too, even though she was seeing stars. I still laugh when I think of it, even though I know that it’s probably wrong to laugh at the accident of a handicapped person.
I was a pallbearer at the funeral of a family friend. All the pallbearers were in a room being briefed by the funeral director. After he left a member of the family of the deceased came in and thanked us all, and told what he claimed was “The slowest joke in the world”. I didn’t get it and just chalked it up to grief on the part of the person who told it. Half an hour later while carrying the casket I got it and by the grace of og was able to hold it inside. The joke: “The toothless termite walks into the bar, gets up on a stool and asks the person across the counter, “Is the bartender here?””.
When I take a 911 call, I’m supposed to have empathy for my callers, and I’m supposed to take control of the situation and remain professional and keep my feelings to myself, and I do my best to do that. But ye gods, some of them make it hard.
How do you not laugh at “Assault With a Frozen Waffle?”
Or, “Drunk Guy and Staple Gun - Not a Good Mix?”
Or, “Tiny Mexicans Riding Horses in the Trees?”
Or, “Stoner Lost a Block From Home?”
Or, “Raccon Attack - When One Comes, They All Come?”
As far as the callers are concerned, they are having emergencies, and I have to respect that. Probably a good thing they can’t see us giggling when we hang up, though.
A little background: my twin sister and I were both in our 30’s when we started driving and it will be forever new to both of us.
Okay, so several years back I’m visiting twin at her home, as are here much older and much stuffier brother-and-sister-in-law. So, to escape the stuffiness, we decide to go out to the store to get some milk. We go to the garage, get into the car, back out, and, as we’re entering the nice turn around area of her driveway, she comments “Isn’t my driving good?” BAM! We hit the stuffy people’s Caddy! And dented it hugely. And they didn’t take it well.
Like 7 1/2 years later I’m still laughing at both the timing and how it happened to such tight asses.
At my dad’s viewing in the funeral home, my sibs and I were still in shock at his rather sudden death. My youngest sister was especially close to him and she was in one of “those” moods. Somehow, we got to talking about the tuxedo he was being buried in which led to my sister saying he should be wearing a T-shirt that said “I died and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!”
I’m sure the other mourners were thinking terrible things about us, but Dad would have loved it, so we laughed for him.
My mother had a similiar problem. When I was about eight and my sister was two, she kept following me around, bothering me, and I got so sick of it that I ended up tieing Baby Sis to a chair, using a sash from my dress up box. Then I left the room to go and play. My mother came in the room a few minutes later, to see my sister bawling her head off, and had to duck out of the room before she could help her, she started laughing so hard.
This is one my mum had a problem containing her mirth over:
Church services, when I was maybe three or four. I guess I was fidgeting and (figuratively) getting on my older sister’s tits a bit – eventually she couldn’t take it any more and ejaculated: “Jesus Christ!” in her very best enraged outside voice.
As every head in the joint turned in shock to glare at the hellion child in their midst, her Sunday School training presented an opportunity for a save: She switched to her honeyed “innocent little lass” voice, and appended “…was born on Christmas day.”
Oh yes…I remember once when I was in highschool, grade 10 or so I think, we had a minute of silence at 11am for Rememberance Day. A guy came on over the PA system and started playing taps on his horn. Except I don’t know if he was nervous or not, but every single note was way off and warbly. It sounded like a brass section getting run over by a steamroller. I tried so hard to hold in my laughter, but I ended up shaking like Michael J. Fox in a freezer for the entire gruelling time, which was more like 5 minutes than 1 minute. And that’s how I desecrated Rememberance Day.
Back in 1981 or so, I was in a group up in Toronto. As so many people were at the time, we were adherents of Better Living Through Chemistry. One time the drummer and I went to a movie in this condition. I don’t know why we went to a movie, or this particular one, I think it was a Friday the 13th flick. Maybe not, it’s not important. But the story was so stupid and predictable, and the acting so stiff, forced and predictable, we ended up in tears laughing because it was so absurd. We were asked, in no uncertain terms, to leave the theater. All these people were trying to be scared, and here we were, unable to stifle the giggles until it just burst out, unstoppable. We deserved to be kicked out, but jeezus, it was funny.
When my son was about five or six we visited my sister for a few days. He and his younger cousin were playing in the backyard and sis and I were sitting in the kitchen talking. All of a sudden the little one came running into the house yelling, “T.J.'s stuck on the fence!” We hurried outside to discover him hanging upside down by one ankle on the chain link fence. He’d gone over to rescue the ball they were playing with, and hadn’t quite made it back. I ran to where he was, having visions of sharp steel through flesh, only to find that he’d only caught his sock. No harm done at all, except that he’d torn the heck out of one of his best socks. He’s still a little mad at me for laughing at him, not to mention my comment that if I’d known he wasn’t hurt I would have gone for the camera.
Yeah, but I couldn’t help it. Ever see that video taken by some kids driving around shooting pedestrians and bicyclists with a paintball gun? First time I saw it I couldn’t stop laughing…I found it inexplicably hilarious. I’m going to hell for that…
During my Grandfather’s final illness, the whole family had gathered in his hospital room to say goodbye and keep vigil. We talked amongst ourselves in muted tones and were very respectful to this wonderful man. He had always wanted a simple cremation so I enquired of my cousin if any arrangements had been made. He said no and pulled out a phone book from the bedside table and started dialing local funeral homes.
One funeral director enquired if a fancy coffin or funeral would be required and my cousin said, “No, just bare bones.”
I burst out laughing, followed by everyone else busting up. It was a great tension reliever and I think my Grandpa would have loved it too.
