Laughter is the best medicine, but sometimes it’s also a response to stress or awkwardness.
And all of us would have to admit that they’ve laughed at something they shouldn’t have at least once in their life, and these folks have some stories that are just terrible (in a hilarious way).
1. Trying to laugh quietly hurts.
Was sat at dinner with friends this week & one of the kiddos was saying they had extra stomachs for some particular food. Started talking about how cows had extra stomachs. Then somehow it got to comparing humans & cows & one of them said in the brightest, most angelic voice, “But mum doesn’t have udders!” I made the mistake of glancing at her husband & I swear the filthy twinkle in his eye was audible.
Thank f**k I have long hair – I dropped my head down to look at my plate, so my hair covered my expression & sat there with my shoulders shaking silently.
He asked in a rather amused voice if I was OK as I appeared to be vibrating.
Couldn’t fu**king breathe.
2. I bet he’s still single.
On the best date of my life I went to see a really stupid movie A Walk To Remember (Edit cause many are asking) with my first girlfriend. We were sitting in the 4th to 5th row from the screen and two rows ahead of us were a group of younger girls.
One of them is rushing back to her seat with her friends and she slips and falls. It was a nasty fall too and even though I felt bad for her I couldn’t stop laughing. It was awful. I don’t know why I couldn’t stop and I was even like, “god I know I shouldn’t laugh but that’s just making me laugh harder.”
It took me at least 10 minutes to stop.
Girl who fell. If you’re out there somewhere I hope my laughing didn’t make you feel bad. To this day I still don’t really get why it was so damn funny to me.
3. Well deserved.
Used to be a member of student Council back in college and this one time during a meeting with the campus Dean who was explaining (very seriously) how some students were sh**ting on the toilet walls and throwing literal s**t on the toilet ceilings which were building up expenses for cleaning.
Was asked to give ideas on how to tackle the issue and I clearly remember trying not to laugh and holding it in perfectly but then as I made eye contact with a friend of mine in the council we bursted out laughing to the point where our stomachs started to hurt which lead to other members of the council laughing out loud.
It was the first time meeting the campus Dean as well after that anytime I’d see him he’d give me a dirty look.
4. You know they wanted to.
I would prefer the laughing!! One time me and an ex set up a hammock stupid high in the middle of his yard and when I got off I fell and landed back first on the metal support rod on the ground. In front of his whole family.
They just stared and didn’t say anything lmfao i would have felt soooo much better if they just laughed with me
5. A legend for sure.
My Grandad had “If you don’t know me by now” played as the curtains closed at his funeral.
Shouldn’t have laughed. Couldn’t help it. Legend.
6. Laugh so you don’t cry.
I was in a local support group for friends and relatives of people with bipolar disorder. One person was relating the story of her older teenage daughter who, in a manic episode, grabbed a flashlight and took it upon herself to stand in a downtown intersection and direct traffic, until she was picked up by the police and taken to the hospital. (I kind of covered my mouth and pretended I was having a coughing fit and excused myself to go to the restroom)
Another person her younger teenage daughter was in the emergency room getting stitched up after an episode of self-harm. One of the nurses was mean and implied she was a waste of space as opposed to the “real” patients and said “You’re just doing it for attention, right?” The daughter, irritated, said “Yes, now gimme!!!!!”. I was able to not laugh at that one, but it was a close call.
7. Absolutely painful.
When I worked with a financial advisor, he misspoke and asked me to check a client’s “investment in black c*ck”, instead of Blackrock (an industry fund).
He didn’t realise what he’d said, and he was super big on maintaining a professional, humorless working environment, so I couldn’t point it out. I managed to keep a straight face long enough to excuse myself, then spent 15 minutes wheezing in a spare office.
8. Funerals can be funny.
My mom’s funeral service. It was just at the funeral home, but we had a priest since my parents are/were Catholic. My dad is severely disabled, so he was only brought in for the actual service part of the whole shebang. We had calling hours first, then a 15 minute service-no church funeral as it would have been too much for my Dad.
So, my dad is sobbing, which was really hard and the Priest was very kind and was comforting him before the service. I stood next to my Dad’s stretcher and held his hand. Then, the service started.
Anyone remember those old Fed Ex or Micro Machines commercials? I think he retired and became a priest. “Inthrnameofthefathersonandholyspiritweblessthiswoman…”
It looked like I was crying for my departed mother, but I was biting my cheeks so hard to keep from laughing that the tears started. I had to walk outside right after so I could let it all out because I couldn’t hold it in anymore.
Before my Dad’s brain injury, he would have been right outside laughing with me 🙂
9. Calls for a breather.
When I was like 17 I worked at an Ace Hardware. I found a guy looking at construction adhesives and sealants with the most confused look on his face, so, I ask him what’s up.
“I am looking for caulk…” (heh)
“…it needs to be black…” (heh heh)
“…and I need it to stay hard.” (trying really hard to hold it together now)
“One minute sir, while I find the guy that works in this department.”
I run off and find the guy that knows caulking and bring him back introducing him to the customer as our “resident caulk expert”, and the customer nods at him approvingly. I then escape to the breakroom where I am dying laughing trying to blubber explain something about hard black cocks to my other coworker.
10. I mean technically…
Some older kid at my school ended up in a coma after taking N2O (i think he ended dying so it’s a pretty dark story) and one of the principals came into an assembly and angrily declared “Nitrous Oxide is no laughing matter!”
I think most of us were too young to know that nitrous oxide is laughing gas but for some reason I knew so everyone was silent/scared of the angry teacher, and I was just there trying not to laugh audibly.
11. You ask, you get an answer.
When I was a second year law student, I had a classmate abruptly get up, mid-lecture, and waddled quickly out of the lecture hall.
There were about 90 students in the lecture and, in law school, the academic approach is the Socratic method, which is usually the professor and one student going 1:1 during the course of a lecture/class.
The dude comes back into the classroom and the professor abruptly halts his current line of questioning with another student. I’m front of the class, the professor asks the returning student, “is everything okay?”
The student responds “bad chipotle” and walked back to his seat. I spent the rest of the lecture period giggling through the professor grilling students about family law.
12. Now I can’t stop laughing.
During a cathedral Confirmation liturgy, the Bishop let out a resounding fart in the reverberant room as he elevated the host.
Immediately, the Deacon began swinging the incense pot (thurible) because the altar boys kneeling directly behind the bishop started holding their noses and waving their hands.
13. What did they expect?
In Highschool there was three religion courses you could pick: catholic, evangelic (edit: I’m told it’s protestant in English) or neutral. You would have different topics in class and different destinations on the yearly trip.
I picked catholic and on the yearly trip we went to a monastery. On the third day one of the exercises was to talk about death, so there’s 20 kids in a circle of chairs and everyone’s crying because everyone lost a loved one at some point and death is a hard topic.
The teacher starts talking about how she imagines death to be like and begins to tell: “I imagine after dying there to be a long long spiral staircase. And you go down and down until there’s a door and behind that door…” The rest I didn’t hear because my friend next to me whispers:
A muhf**ken kebab-stand” We both sat there giggling for like 20 more minutes until the meeting was over. To this day I feel really bad.
14. Emotions are hard.
My senior year of high school I went to this memorial breakfast with my principal and a few other seniors because my principal was begging a few of us to go and hey, free breakfast.
So getting to the end this woman starts singing an incredibly moving song, and she’s doing beautifully. But I look over at my principal and he just looks so dead. Like his face was completely blank and because I also don’t deal well with emotion apparently, I thought it was the funniest thing ever.
So while this lady is singing and some people are crying I am losing my mind and trying so hard to stop laughing and I can’t. My friends thought I was having a complete mental breakdown, like I’d finally lost my mind or something.
I felt absolutely horrible about it and ducked out as soon as I could.
15. Bless her heart.
“I took Italian taught by this sweet little Japanese lady who was fluent in Italian, french, and Japanese.
Well she was very short and sat on one of those super tall office chairs that are used for sitting in front of podiums. She couldn’t touch the floor with her feet and she started to roll out of the door into the hallway and she couldn’t stop… I laughed so hard that I cried and had to go into the bathroom to finish laughing
Also I was the only one laughing. She was frantically waving her arms and legs trying to stop rolling but she couldn’t…
16. It’s kind of a nice send off.
Back in 2004, I was at my cousin’s funeral, and my aunt was in such a shocked state, she couldn’t stop laughing. She was known to do this at funerals.
Because laughing is contagious, I also started laughing a little bit, and I had to go to the back of the church, and to the bathroom to get it out of me.
17. Sometimes God speaks.
At a funeral, the pastor kept referring to God as “The Great Comforter” and all I could think of was a tacky bedspread glowing with holy light.
Every time he said it my giggles got worse to the point I had to pretend I was crying really hard and left to hide in the bathroom.
18. I mean…farts are funny.
I heard a kid fart in church during a wedding.
I had to remove myself because I couldn’t get it under control.
It was one of those loud, echo of the old wooden pew farts.
19. It’s always a good time for a pun?
Visiting my Grandmothers grave with my grandfather for the first time a few years ago.
Expected tears and a solemn day.
Instead we passed a grave marked “Wanda” and my grandfather said “Well I wanda what killed her?” none of us could stop laughing, my grandmother would have loved it.
20. Just because it’s wrong doesn’t mean it’s not funny.
With a group of friends talking about random s**t. After a while the topic of Alzheimer’s disease comes up and a friend comments that his grandmother died of Alzheimer’s.
Another friend goes: “Didn’t know you could die of Alzheimer’s, always thought you died of the complications”, and then another friend casually blurts: “Maybe she just forgot she was alive”.
I had to leave the room because I was crying from laughing.
21. I don’t know which part of this is worse.
Held up a cadavers arm, forgot the arm was detached to the body, raised it up, wondered why it was loose, panicked that i detached it, dropped it on the floor and thought the professor was gonna be mad, hid the arm under the gurney, while the professor was staring at me 0.5 meters behind. I turned around, looked at her and laughed.
Worst. Moment. Ever.
22. When your brain just short-circuits.
Not me, but my friend.
She was getting fired from her job, and all she could think about was “What’ll it be fellas? Mustard, or ketchup?” from the Spongebob Squarepants movie.
23. Inside jokes.
My friends from college and I are still super close even 15 years later. There’s an inside joke involving giving people a specific fake name that we always laugh about when we get together.
Last week one of these friends tried to kill himself. We’ll call him John.
John’s brother (another of the close friends) called me and told me that John had tried to kill himself and that he was at the hospital. Then he tells me that when asked for identification at the scene of the suicide attempt John gave the paramedics the fake name from college. As sad as I was about what had happened I bust out laughing so hard when he told me.
I couldn’t help it. I’m laughing now even thinking about it.
All of the other members of the group had the same reaction when John’s brother called them. All of them.
We’ve got lake of fireside property in hell. Cheers.
24. True love.
My mother and father went to a funeral of one of mothers aunts that she was not close too, in fact my father had never met her. As they stood at the open casket my father said to my mother “ she just doesn’t look like herself” again my father had never seen the aunt before.
For whatever reason this struck my mother as very funny and she started laughing , she held her hands to her face and ran from the casket. Her sisters saw this and thought she distraught and followed her out to console her.
Where my mother had to explain that she was laughing and not crying and why. She was so pissed at my father it was hilarious.
25. Oversharing.
Last year’s Thanksgiving, right before the meal we all stood in a big circle and said a prayer and what we are thankful for.
My mom’s uncle, I will refer to him as “uncle”. His name is dick, yes Uncle Dick. When we all stood up, it was revealed that Uncle Dick had forgotten to zip up his jeans after going to the bathroom. My dad and I were directly across from Uncle Dick and we were barely keeping from bursting out in all our laughter. Then he leaned over to me and whispered, “I’m thankful that Uncle Dick remembered to put on fresh underwear this morning.”
About halfway through the meal we were still laughing about it when Grandma came over to yell at us for being distracting. She basically asked what we were laughing at in a not so nice voice. We pointed her gaze across the room and she couldn’t help but laugh a bit. We told her it had been like that the whole meal.
The way we had the tables set up was a big square of folding banquet tables. So we could look out straight ahead of us at Uncle Dick’s Boxers.
26. Kids are the best.
At the wake for the grandma of my honorary sister and brother. At some point, the old biddies from her church decide “the children” need to come up and say goodbye to her in front of all these mourners, none of which I know (also this is eastern Kentucky where everyone knows everyone else, so already people are eyeing me trying to figure out who tf i am and why I’m sitting with the family).
Well, before I realize what’s happened, the two of them have marched me up there with them and pinned me in between them. I’m awkward in the best of situations, and am SUPREMELY uncomfortable at funerals, so this is already my personal hell.
So we stand there and stare down at her in front of 100s of people, as this somber music plays and the priest instructs everyone to pray for us as we say our last goodbyes. She’s wearing this double breasted sailor suit thing, and sis and i are making quiet awkward comments like “well, she looks nice” when all of a sudden our little brother blurts out “Anchors away, ol’ girl!” and f**king SALUTES.
So my sister lets out long drawn out gasp of “What the fuuuuuck” and we just start trembling with laughter. You can hear all the old church ladies “aww”ing bc it looks from the back like we’re overcome with grief. As soon as we’re able to control ourselves, we essentially frogmarch little brother down the aisle with our heads down and head straight out the door to the car.
27. Nervous laughter.
Idk if there’s a name for it, but when I get really nervous, or scared, I start to laugh. Like, if it’s bad enough, you’d think I was watching the best scene in the best 3 Stooges skit ever made.
So I was driving down the interstate when I saw a deer bolt across. It got hit by a car in the oncoming lane, flew like a rag doll in front of my 18 wheeler, and exploded.
Idk what happened, there was just blood everywhere. It looked like I’d gone on a rampage in GTA, but with blood physics from Mortal Kombat.
I pulled over to inspect the damage. Just blood and bits of flesh everywhere, and a cracked and bent grill. I got lucky, so I filled out a report with my company, and took off for a shop to see about fixing the grill, and hopefully a truck wash.
And wouldn’t you know, there’s an open weigh station just ahead.
The DOT officer came out to see me as soon I was in sight, and waved me over to the inspection area. He immediately starts laying into me about why the hell the front of my truck is covered in blood.
And I am just laughing. I mean I couldn’t get a single word out, every time I tried to say something, I got a few words out, and just burst out laughing.
Finally his partner starts inspecting the truck, and finds a piece of a hoof. I slowly manage to calm down enough to talk, and we got it all sorted.
Luckily the DOT officer was having a good day, because he decided not to write me a ticket, and let me use their water hose they had on sight to wash most of it off before I took it to a shop to repair the grill.
Edit: I’m not a lawyer, so I can’t quote chapter and verse, but some people are asking, so here’s an answer.
Some states have weird laws protecting wildlife, so if you hit them, you can be fined. I’m pretty sure this for specific animals like eagles, but I also have an ongoing fear of getting tickets every time I get inspected, so that was more of something I was relieved did NOT happen.
28. What did he expect?
I had this really nice but really awkward physics teacher in high school. He was a large nerdy man but spoke with a lisp and a very soft voice. Imagine the guy from office space asking for his stapler, that’s how he sounded.
One day he is giving his lesson and mid sentence he goes from this voice to what sounded like satan himself. “Ok class please (deep hell voice)TAKE OUT YOUR BOOKS, cough cough erm excuse me must have something in my throat”.
Then continued like nothing happened. I could not, for the life of me stop laughing and I was the only one.
It was the most bizarre and f**king hilarious thing I had ever seen. I had to walk out of the class to catch my composure. This was at least 15 years ago now and I’ll never forget it.
29. What a great story.
In school we did a course on mythology and had a project where we had to write our own mythological stories for the creation of creatures/places/etc.
One kid wrote a story about how a man was abusing his horse, so the gods cursed him. One day his horse threw him onto spear which went through the back of his head and out of his forehead, and he transformed into the first unicorn.
I couldn’t f**king stop laughing for a solid 5 minutes. The teacher berated me for laughing at violence but the kid and I both thought that was funny as s**t.
30. A way through grief.
My grandparents (both sets) insisted on burying my parents as Catholic for their funeral.
Little did they know, my parents hadn’t been practicing the religion since they moved out of their parents home.
They hired a lady who was singing off-tune catholic songs so loud into the microphone that it felt like a drunk karaoke concert.
Everyone probably thought I was shaking from crying in the front row by myself but I was literally laughing so god damn hard I had tears streaming down my face. I had to practically choke myself to keep the giggles from coming out.
I could just imagine my parents next to me going WTF is this?! And laughing with me. It was a very inappropriate time to laugh but that dang lady got the best of me.
31. Bless.
My father’s funeral… my daughter was 3 months old and have a lot of belly pain. … she farted so loudly that the priest needed to stop talking for us to stop laughing…
He even told us that the church was a serious place, and if we couldn’t behave to get out.. I told him the deceased was my father, and I couldn’t control my daughter’s farts.
I’m not afraid to admit that now I’m laughing!
Do you have a story to add to the list? Share it with us in the comments!
