I have several long stories, but I’ll start with two shorter tales
One was a common situation: little brother ripped the loudest fart in history during a “silent meditation on God” moment in church. The wooden pew turbo-charged the noise. My siblings and I laughed so hard we were crying and our very angry and embarrased mom banished us to the foyer.
Another episode happened when I was helping a friend move furniture. A piece that looked exactly like a giant bulletin board tack fell off the bottom of a chair leg. Sure enough, barefooted friend stepped on it and it stuck into her sole. She hopped around screaming bloody murder while I couldn’t stop laughing because it played exactly like a cartoon scene. Friend had acted like a birch on wheels all day, so this enhanced my prolonged laughing for.
I’ve another story involving a karate class fart, but I’ll save it for now.
As the mother of two children, I can admit that every now and then while they are in the middle of a really angry breakdown and very, very serious about something, I have to leave the room to avoid laughing.
My youngest daughter is a serious competitive gymnast. Her coach is Asian and she is constantly complaining about their love/hate relationship. We were visiting my parents and other family when they asked how gymnastics was going.
My 10 year old daughter grabbed the corner of her eyes, squinched them and said to everyone at the table, “My name is LING! I am from CHINA! You need do more work!”
No, we didn’t have any cultural sensitivity lessons after that. It was funny as hell and took a while for the laughter to die down plus Ling really is kind of a bitch regardless of where she is from.
Friend and I were at a mall food court which had some kiddy rides. A horse, a car, a plane - you put in a quarter and it shakes the kid around for a while. Hard for a kid to get hurt on that, right?
A mom put her young son in the airplane, started the ride and then turned to talk with her friend. A minute later the ride finished, but mom was still talking. The kid looked around and decided to climb out on his own. He got one foot over the side, slipped, fell all the way to the floor flat on his face and began screaming bloody murder. Everyone turned and looked as the horrified mom tried to comfort the kid.
My friend nods at the airplane and says, "The engine quit, so he bailed out!"
We began laughing uncontrollably, whereupon the crowd turned to look incredulously at US, obviously wondering how we could be so heartless. This was over twenty years ago, and I still can’t help laughing at it.
I laughed hysterically while being sworn in to the Air Force at MEPS. Thirteen years later I am still suitably ashamed, but it was totally uncontrollable.
Many years ago, I was watching a foreign film in a packed theater, and there was a scene where a pre-teen boy is caught being some place he shouldn’t have been, and is chased out wearing nothing but a shirt as the person who caught him there whips him. I thought, “Got caught with his pants down!” and started laughing, even though the child was being abused and scene was NOT funny at all.
:o :smack:
I had a cousin who was very witty, and had a dry and uncouth sense of humor. He had a charming personality, such that most people took an instant liking to him. He said inappropriate things all the time, but everyone loved him so he almost always got away with it. He was 13 years older than me, and until the day he died, 13 years ago, I idolized him like the older brother I never had.
A year or so after his death I sobered up and went through a group therapy program with Kaiser. There was a guy in the group who had many of the same mannerisms as my cousin, and had that same dry wit. He would make funny comments and crack jokes all the time. Every time he talked, I was fascinated, because he reminded me so much of my cousin.
One night somebody else was telling a story, which culminated with her friend hanging himself. Dude immediately said “meh, he was a loser anyway.” I’m pretty sure he meant it like “as far as society is concerned, us drunks and addicts are all losers.” But I was the only one who made that connection. It was so totally what my cousin would have said. While everyone else in the room was glaring at Dude, I started laughing uncontrollably. And then I got to share in their ire.
K, one of the three women in my department filed sexual harassment charges against several of the men in our department. Not that they had directly harassed her, but that conversations she overheard caused her distress. M, the other woman in the department, and I had been party to most of the “offensive” conversations. We had not been offended, but were both questioned at length. Quite frankly, the allegations were ridiculous, but it was all being taken very seriously, as it should be.
K was on a leave of absence for a period of time. She was due to come back and we were having a department meeting with our head telling us what to expect and the findings of the investigation. I look across the table at M, and upon making eye contact, we both couldn’t stop laughing. We were trying to hold it in, but eventually we just couldn’t. We were laughing so hard, we were crying. Department head just looked at us, rolled his eyes, and said, “I can’t take the two of you anywhere, can I?”
Haven’t worked for this company in 20 years, was just chatting with M the other day about the incident.
That made me laugh so hard the cat looked at me funny.
I’ve never laughed inappropriately* but I came this close to making my girlfriend laugh. We were attending a performance on a classical guitarist whose name escapes me. It was just him sitting on a stool with an acoustic guitar. It wasn’t even miced so he was not exactly filling the hall with sound. During a song, people were sitting very, very still then stir around a bit to a new position between tunes.
The concert had been going a while and we were sitting with her left hand in my lap so I could caress her fingers (she liked that). I got curious how much longer the concert would be so I rolled her wrist over and pushed what I thought was the light button on her digital watch. Needless to say, I was wrong and instead of lighting up, the watch went dee-deeet! into the silence of the hall.
She, of course, snatched her hand back and I sat there chastened for a bit, then turned towards her to receive the Death Glare. Instead, she ducked her head and I was puzzled. Is she so embarrassed she was crying? Is she really furious at me? I’d better check again. I looked and she ducked her head again, not clarifying anything and causing new questions to rattle around in my head.
We cycled through this another time or two and then I gave up, sitting still for the remainder of the piece. It was the last piece of the performance so we applauded and stood up to leave.
“I’m gonna kill you!”
“Why? You know it was an accident.”
“It’s not that, it’s just I got to thinking about all those people sitting there all stern and solemn until my watch wrecked it, and I started to get the giggles. I just about got it under control when you looked at me, starting it all over. I’d suppress it then you’d look at me again! My diaphragm hurts and I didn’t even get a good laugh.”
*Or lied, either.
My dad’s funeral.
My three sisters and I were sitting grave-side with our mom. The second oldest whispers to us, in a serious, solemn voice “We’re sitting on my grave” (she has a plot with my parents and our chairs were on it).
We could NOT stop laughing. It was the funniest and most horrible thing ever.
I mentioned this once on the Dope before, but my best/worst uncontrollable laughter episode occurred years ago during (of all things) a session with a tax preparer at Sears.
We were assigned a very serious and dignified old Indian gentleman named C.U. Mehta (as in, C.U. Mehta, alligatah). He was intent on exploring every possible ramification of our seemingly uncomplicated tax return (I wasn’t making very much money and we had no significant investment income). It went on interminably, and when I was beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel, old C.U. starting going off on yet another tangent.
I glanced over at Mrs. J., she started giggling and it was contagious. Something about C.U.'s offended look just made me laugh harder. I had to get up and go somewhere else for awhile to get back under control. (C.U. muttered something to Mrs. J. about how “these professors aren’t very stable” (I was working for a university at the time). 
Another golden oldie was our stop during a road trip to eat at a semi-nice restaurant in the wilds of Pennsylvania called “The Evergreen”. An unfortunate diner at a nearby table had a medical condition that resulted in the continual production of horrible gagging and near-vomiting noises, that apparently were not life-threatening but also not exactly conducive to a Fine Dining experience. I recall us turning interesting shades of red-purple in an ultimately successful effort not to burst out into inappropriate laughter.
A guy at my office – warm, professional, unfailingly polite – was born and raised in India; and a WASPy colleague of ours was struggling not to look frustratedly flustered by an agitated client who seemed to take everything the wrong way.
And so said WASP came over to quietly plead with said warm and professional and unfailingly polite guy to swap in – because, well, nothing else was working, and in desperation he could but sputter a hope that, hey, you’re Indian, and he’s Indian…
“No,” explains the warm and professional and unfailingly polite expert; “I am Indian; he is Pakistani.” He pauses meaningfully. “We hate them,” he adds.
That’s when I should’ve stepped in to help, but I was giggling uncontrollably.
Having been a TV news anchor, there were some I’d rather forget about. Having to suppress a laugh when saying “His Grace the Archbishop”, whom, off-camera, was always called “His Arse the Gracebishop”. And always having to stop and think before mentioning Montreal mayor Sarto Fournier, to make sure it’s didn’t undergo its usual spoonerization, and keep a straight face while doing so.
My store had fidget spinners for sale, limited to five per customer. One customer went ballistic, asking to speak to the head cashier and then the manager, only to be told there was a limit of five per customer. She leaves in a huff.
A half hour later the manager gets a call from the head office. Yep, the customer called them and cussed them out over the policy.
Head cashier and I were on the floor laughing.
Not exactly an inappropriate situation, but it became one: I was in a dress rehearsal for Bye Bye Birdie, our high school’s musical junior year. I played Mrs. Peterson, the lead’s mother. Birdie is a Presley-like rock star who is trying to escape town. Chuck, who played Birdie, made his entrance dressed in one of my dowdy dresses and hats. He was supposed to look funny, that was the point, but I couldn’t stop laughing, so for about 15 minutes we couldn’t go on with the rehearsal.
When we were kids, a friend of mine went careening down a mountain road on his bike with no brakes. I laughed till I nearly pissed my pants.
It’s actually a pretty funny story.
I forgot to mention the Lollapalooza of inappropriate laughter, on-air version.
A long time ago in in the Midwest, I was working at a small-market radio station which had been hit by a serious personnel shortage (mostly because two DJs/announcers were involved in a motorcycle crash that laid them up for an extended period).
I was working a split shift totaling about 12 hours a day, six days a week and was pretty well beat. One afternoon I was running the board while our ditsy newswoman was reading items of semi-interest. I was idly playing with a pencil which happened to roll off the console and hit the floor with a clatter. Not the most hilarious thing ever, but it started the newswoman to giggling, which despite attempts at restraint set me off as well. We both had a good chortle, which was unfortunate since the story she was reading at the time was about a tragedy which had befallen a local man. :eek:
Someone in the guy’s family called the station owner in outrage, but we managed not to lose our jobs (hell, they would’ve had to press the salesman and janitor into service to keep things running).
:D:D:D Hilarious!!
My story is from church, too.
Sitting in a pew were Heidi’s cousin, Heidi, then me. Cousin quietly gets up and leaves, I assume to use the washroom. Fifteen minutes pass and I whisper to Heidi:
“where is cousin?”
Heidi whispers “she went to take a pill”
Long pause then I lean over and whisper:
“must have been a big pill”
Heidi makes a loud fart-like sound out of her nose as she tries to stifle a laugh which makes me plug my nose and hold my mouth closed to try to not laugh. Both of us run down the isle snorting and choking, trying not to laugh. 
About twenty years ago a friend and I went to a funeral. We had a childhood friend that died young and now many years later, the guys father had died. We had not kept in touch and just by chance noticed the obituary in the paper and on a whim decided to go to the service. The minister was eulogizing the guy and suddenly started talking about the deceased’s love for his dogs and animals in general. Instantly I flashed back to a time when I was about 12 and that family’s dog had gotten loose and led the deceased and half the kids in the neighborhood on a long merry chase before we finally caught it. Deceased guy was really angry by this time. He grabbed the dog by the collar and started kicking it pretty hard. Not bone breaking hard but enough to send a message to a big sturdy pup. And lots of yelling. (Yes, I know the dog probably had no idea why this game ended up with him getting kicked and screamed at.) All the kids were standing around aghast, including the friend that went to the funeral with me.
I glanced over at him and he looked at me, we realized we were both flashing back to the same moment and we both lost it. And by lost it I me we were trying so hard to choke back laughter and not having much luck. Tears running down our cheeks, biting our lips, trying to act like we were coughing and desperately trying to not dissolve into hysterical laughter.
I know people often mellow out as they age and he probably really did love his dogs and animals.
Ernest, a very well liked technician at work, was arrested for sexually assaulting his teenaged step daughter. Obviously he was fired. Everyone was disgusted and upset about it. There was an article in the local paper and we were discussing it. One of my co-workers starting humming that song from the musical Tommy.
Do you think it’s alright
To leave the boy with Uncle Earnie
I totally lost it.