This could be a fun thread! I’ll go first.
My aunt lived out in the woods, and she had an above-ground pool. This was back in the mid-80s. I’m guessing it was 4 feet deep and maybe 10 or 12 feet across — pretty large for a pool of that type.
This was the “cool aunt,” the one who hosted keggers. She had a big party one weekend, which took a raucous turn as the kegs emptied.
People piled into the pool. There must’ve been a dozen or so floating around on pool noodles and rafts, some with Jell-O shots and cups of Michelob Light.
A friend and I were sitting about 25 feet away on a couple of bales of hay, which had been brought in as seating. We were smoking a big fat joint and watching the half-crocked swimmers splash and carry on.
One drunken nitwit returned to the pool from pissing in the woods. Rather than walking around the pool to use the ladder to get back in, he decided to hoist himself over the side.
When he put all his weight on the top rim of the pool, the PVC thingy broke, and a vertical seam separated, from top to bottom. He hit the ground, and a tsunami washed over him. The wave whooshed out and deposited the occupants of the pool into the yard.
They just sat and laid there, blinking in the grass and dirt, some still holding miraculously unspilled Jell-O shots and beer, others still on rafts.
It was utterly quiet for maybe 10 seconds. You could hear the birds, despite Marshall Tucker blaring on the stereo.
Then my friend and I started laughing. We cried. We screamed. We tried not to pee. We laughed so hard we fell off our hay bales. It was the funniest thing I’d ever seen.
You?
PaulWartenberg
The funniest thing I ever saw? A real life thing?
I’d seen wacky things, crazy things… poignant things. I think the funniest thing I ever saw was a U of Florida maintenance guy kicking a 6-foot gator down Museum Rd towards Lake Alice. Under normal circumstances, that gator would have bitten the guy’s leg off, but he was so fearless herding the poor thing it never thought to fight back.
Betty Cracker
@PaulWartenberg: It amazes me that no one has ever been eaten on campus with all those big-ass gators. Or maybe they have, and UF doesn’t tell anyone. ?
lahke
A 2-year old retelling a joke that she’d heard from her 4-year old brother. She had no idea why it was funny, but knew that the adults thought so. We about split so she did it again. And again. And again.
Since you are likely to ask:
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Interrupting cow.
Interrupting c
Moo!
Yes, I do have pictures of the Boston meetup, just have to upload them tomorrow. Good night.
Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)
My husband’s reaction when he opened the carton of eggs and saw the googly eyes I had stuck on them.
1. A quick yell (“Aaggh!”)
2. He actually opened the fridge and checked the other carton of eggs to see if they suddenly had eyes too. To this day neither of us have any idea why
3. Hysterical laughter for about half an hour
Yeah, it doesn’t take much.
HumboldtBlue
I love a singing crowd.
Mnemosyne
I knpw we’re supposed to be talking about IRL, but I think I became this for my friends when we went to the theater to see the first Austin Powers movie. I laughed so hard at the striptease scene that I literally fell out of my seat and onto the floor of the movie theater and had to scramble back up, still laughing.
CaseyL
Betty, you were stoned. That’s cheating. Almost ANYTHING can be funny enough to laugh so hard you pee yourself.
My funniest thing, non-stoned edition: In the mid-90s, my aunt was visiting from out of town. Among our adventures was e road-trip through the Olympic Peninsula. I didn’t own a car back then, so we had a rental: a little white Toyota sedan.
We were on the road to the Kingston-Edmonds ferry, and I was anxious as another group of visitors was due at my house and I needed to be home when they got there. As is usual on summer weekends the line to get on the ferry was backed up halfway through downtown Kingston. I decided to get out of the car, go to one of the restaurants and see if anyone knew whether the ferry was running late. At the pizza joint, they said they thought everything was on schedule.
Like I said, we had rented a white Toyota sedan. A car that, for all its virtues, looks like every other little white sedan in the world.
So I come out of the pizza joint, cross the street to the waiting line of vehicles, open the door and slide into the passenger seat, already talking: “They say the next ferry will be here in — ” and only at that point do I turn to look at my aunt.
Except my aunt is not in the driver’s seat. Instead, there is someone else, some other woman, who has plastered herself against the driver side window, as far from me as she can get without exiting the car altogether. “I think,” she said very carefully, “you may be in the wrong car.”
We both look forward, through the windshield.
My rental car is in front of the car I have entered, and we can both see – and hear – my aunt, toppled over onto the passenger seat, laughing like a gassed hyena.
I apologize and leave the stranger’s car. I go to the correct car. My aunt manages to sit up so I can get in.
Then we both start laughing so hard we fall over, curl up, and damnear wet ourselves.
cope
We had a smaller above ground pool. One night, when my high school buddy, a big football player/shot putter had just come home from something, we were sitting outside with my parents. Knowing that my sister would be coming home soon, we sent him out to the pool where he lay in wait underwater with a snorkel. When my sister got home shortly thereafter, my parents acting mad that she was late, told her to go out and check the filter motor on the pool. When she got out there, Bob rose up out of the water (our pool was only 3 feet deep) growling. My sister screamed and collapsed. My parents, Bob and I laughed with delight. My sis, not so much
Major Major Major Major
I’m really bad at being put on the spot. I can’t remember a single funny thing I’ve ever seen.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I was wondering just today if that movie holds up.
The Dangerman
Non-Real Life: “Eating Raoul” (watched at UCLA from a film historian). I have got to get a copy. From same historian, an old, old silent called “Everready Hard On”. It’s probably out on the web someplace….
Real Life: I used to give tours at a Lighthouse Complex for a class of Older Folk (if you’ve ever heard of Osher, that’s the kind of group I was teaching; probably around 20 or so). Anyway, this complex was somewhat isolated from what you might call civilization … not dramatically far, but far enough.
So, I was introducing the buildings. The Lighthouse (duh). The fuel oil house (separated in case of fire). The assistants house. The house where they had the horns (fog signals).
Anyway, there’s a lot of things that went on in the horn house so I talked about it a lot; anyway, sometime along the way, one of the dear, sweet older ladies raised her hand and asked a question that didn’t make any sense to me until I realized that she had misunderstood my words. She didn’t hear horn house. She heard whore house. Hey, she presumed lonely guys (FWIW, this facility, when operational, required married men for service out there.) and all, far from society, I suppose it made some sense.
Still, cracked me up.
Anyway, I trained myself to always say foghornhouse whenever I do docenting now.
Matt Smith
So during my college years, my a cappella singing group would spend Spring Break on these road trips. Everybody except the driver would drink the whole time we were in the van. If we’d stopped every time someone needed to pee, we’d never have gotten anywhere… so we used to pee into the empty beer bottles. Whoever rode shotgun, it was their responsibility to empty the beer bottles of urine out the front window, then pass the empty bottles back again.
One day we’re riding along, and my friend Jeff was riding shotgun. He was this Type A kid, a good friend but a little too anal. When he went to empty a beer bottle, he held it too high or something, and the whole thing blew back in his face. He turned around in his seat to look at us with this stunned expression, and from the back of the van, I could see his glasses glistening, covered with droplets that could only be one thing. And I mean, covered… so he got sprayed but good. Funniest shit I’ve ever seen in my life.
Mainmata
You’re story is totally movie worthy, Bettty. Just imagining it in your retelling makes me laugh. I’ve personally seen a lot of funny things but certainly one of the funniest was this: two young foxes in the middle of winter emerge in our backard (Silver Spring, MD) and inspect the natural pond in the back. It appears to be solid ice so one of them decides to skate onto the pond (we’re watching this in real time in amazement). Soon enough the ice breaks and the young fox plunges into the frigid pond and then immediateely leaps straight up and out of the pond and rolls frantically around on the ground to get rid of the icey water. What made it art is his brother/sister dancing around yipping and very clearly enjoying the sibling’s distress. So human-like, frankly.
cynthia ackerman
Not a firsthand witness, but about 25 years ago a bunch of friends and colleagues attended a global creative conference for Nike corporate in Stevenson, WA.
Keynote speaker was a famous Bigfoot expert.
About halfway through his outdoor presentation, a graphics designer (g.b., you know who you are) in a very convincing Bigfoot costume rose out of the bushes behind the speaker, who had no idea why his audience was suddenly roaring with excitement.
The story goes that a couple of golfers further behind the speaker threw their clubs in the air and ran away in a panic.
A truly inspired prank at a time of glorious excess at Nike.
Ah, the nineties …
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m mulling over a few real life examples, but if movies are admissible I think the hardest I ever laughed was the first (of I don’t know how many times) I saw The Producers. The real one, with Zero.
dnfree
Maybe only mildly amusing….
In 1968 my husband was in graduate school at the University of Chicago, and there was a movie night (with a screen and projector and all that). The title of the movie was written in chalk on the blackboard–“True Grit” (this would have been the John Wayne version). Someone walked up to the front of the room and erased two letters and changed it to “True Shit”.
Jay
There was a gravel pit that Steve and I used to hone our Mountain Bike skills, back in the day.
I had a Rabbit Cabriolet, Steve had a Honda Civic, so my bike traveled intact, Steve’s bike travelled with the front wheel off.
So, the goal was to ride at speed to the edge of the pit, grab air, stick the landing, ride the slope down, survive the transition to flat at the bottom, make it across the base, then “highside” as far as you could on the upslope.
So this one day, we met up at the pit. I went first, because I was ready first. Grabbed good air, stuck the landing, made the transition, bunny hopped over the debris, made it about halfway up the otherside, before I flopped over.
Steve meanwhile had scouted out a ramp. So, he launched with epic air. And then his front wheel fell off because he forgot to tighten the quick release. So, he went to throw the bike away, forgetting he was clipped into the pedals, all that happened was the seat post pivioted into Steve’s crotch.
It was an epic yard sale.
The Dangerman
My picture taking can occasionally rival our Blog Masters for clarity, but I thought I’d share a picture of “Matilda“. For the non-early morning crowd, my morning post on this cat.
efgoldman
We were married less than a year, so 42 years ago.
mrs efg was working in Jordan’s basement, downtown Boston. Literally, in the basement, selling “foundations.” Occasionally she brought undergarments home to try.
On this day, she brought home an all-in-one (women of a certain age will know….) She took it off the rack in the back room because it was sized wrong
She tried it on, and from the bedroom I heard a muffled “HELP”
I rushed in, to find her stuck diagonally,, unable to get the garment on or off.
I started giggling, then laughing, then guffawing until my sides hurt and tears ran down my face.
And the more she yelled at me that it wasn’t funny, the harder I laughed.
Of course, when you raise kids, they do/say lots of funny things, but that goes with
prostratedragon
Unthinking me turning on a vac near a sleeping cat …
There have been many other things, but none so vivid.
Yutsano
Huh. My comment got et. I was just mentioning my wild turkey story (I’ve told it here before but can again) and both it and my nym disappeared.
Hungry Joe
Heard, not seen: At the dinner table my father was vexed about something. He said, “Jesus Christ!” My mother, a wonderful women but who, as far as any of us could and can remember, never said or did a funny thing in her life, looked around wildly and said, “Where? Where?” We were all rolling on the floor for a long, long time.
Biscuits
Our dog, Sam, found a pack of cigarettes in the yard one summer (were my moms, she has since quit). Sam shook the pack and somehow managed to get one cigarette to protrude from her mouth. She ran from us trying to take it from her. We laughed so hard. She thought we were playing.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA):
Happy anniversary!
psycholinguist
my colleague was teaching a psych 101 class covering Skinner and punishment, and wanted an image of a student having to write on the board for misbehaving in class. She has literally 3 minutes till the class starts. She does a quick google image search on the 12″ laptop, and an image of Bart Simpson writing a sentence over and over again on a chalkboard pops up. She grabs it and pastes it in the PowerPoint, runs to class to her lecture. As she’s gets to that point in her talk, and the image is projected behind her, the students giggle a bit, and then she hears some mix of guffaws and gasps. one of the students in the front row points to the screen. My friend turns to see that Bart is writing a deeply profane sentence about himself and a girl named Sally, which she could not read on her tiny laptop screen but is now clearly legible. She still had 40 minutes of class to get through.
Major Major Major Major
@CaseyL: yeah, if drug stories are allowed then the funniest thing I ever saw was a peach.
PaulB
The one that comes to mind was a community theater production of “West Side Story,” in which I was playing Officer Krupke. There’s a scene where I’m questioning two of the kids and one kneels behind me and the other ones pushes me over him, after which they run away laughing.
Most of the time, I kind of rolled off the kid behind me but one night they got it just right, caught me somewhat off guard, and I really did fall back straight, legs flying in the air as I landed hard. This would have been fine, albeit somewhat painful, if it were not for the fact that the uniform I was wearing was at least one size too small for me and when my legs went up wide, the entire back of the pants split open, noticeable by the audience both audibly and visually.
So I’m on my back, slightly shaken, with the entire audience laughing at my predicament and all of us wondering just how the hell I was going to get off stage!
Citizen_X
I once lived in a little house with a couple of friends that had a wood stove for heat. This stove had a broad flat area on top that was fairly smooth. We also had a little cat in the house, for kitty friendship.
One day I came home, all alone (except for said cat), and the house was cold, so I filled up the wood stove and started a fire going. I was sitting there reading, and the cat came up and started eyeing the top of the stove. Eyeing it very intently, as a matter of fact, and when he started working his rear legs, I realized he was about to jump up on the stove.
Perhaps my hand reached out (in slow motion, natch) as I started to cry “…nooooooooooo!” He jumped. And for a split second, he settled back on his haunches, but instantly became very alarmed, and tried to run. With the smooth stove top, however, his feet couldn’t get any purchase. What happened looked exactly like a cartoon: eyes wide, his furiously pumping legs a blur, stuck in one spot until suddenly–PEEOWWW!–he shot across the room like lightning.
I wrapped some ice in a towel, coaxed the poor thing out from under the couch, and applied the ice to his paws. I doubt I was the most comforting caretaker, though: I was laughing uncontrollably the whole time. “Come out, kitty, come–kkkkkk snort hahaha–here!”
Mary G
Funniest thing I’ve seen today was posted by TBogg:
Donna Brazile and Sarah Palin bridging the political divide is hilarious. I cannot imagine who would buy a ticket to that.
A Ghost To Most
Watching the birds get drunk on fermented mulberries in our yard in MD was always worth a couple good laughs
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
I did that the first time I ever saw the “Springtime for Hitler” number in (the original) The Producers. I knew absolutely nothing about it going in, had barely heard of Mel Brooks, and had no expectations. Like you, I was literally (literally literally) on the floor, helpless and incoherent with mirth.
A Ghost To Most
@Jay: Damn.
He’s lucky he was still immortal.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Well dammit.
Yarrow
@Mary G: Weren’t they going to do that last year when Brazille’s book came out? I’m sure I remember something like that but it got canceled. I figured it would never happen. Who in the world would go to it?
Hungry Joe
I’ve fallen out of my chair in a movie theater only once — at a screening of “The Bank Dick” when, during the wild, already hilarious car-chase scene, W.C. Fields passes a woman standing in the road and calls out, “Hiya. Toots!”
Hungry Joe
#*%*%*$$% can’t edit: That was supposed to be “Hiya, Toots!” With a comma. Inappropriate punctuation can (did!) kill a joke.
A Ghost To Most
@Mainmata:
When I used to play golf at Redgate Golf Course in that area, there was a fox along the 17th fairway that would steal golf balls.
John Revolta
@Yutsano: That’s the new Duplicate Story Filter. Blame that Major Major guy.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne: For me, that was the cat juggling scene in The Jerk.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Even on video, I can tell you the exact moment that happens to me with that movie: it’s when the dancers in “Springtime for Hitler” do the “listening” dance move. You know the one.
For some reason, that moment makes me completely lose it every. single. time.
MoCA Ace
One of the more recent… My grandson singing Uptown Funk to his mom in the kitchen. Of course as a four year old the “n” was silent :). She got it on video of course!
Ely Lake
Betty, you’ve always had a way with words, but that story was pure gold! It had me laughing out loud in my kitchen in Colorado. I need to get up early tomorrow and thought I was reading just one more post before heading to bed, but now (having continued to read all these other gems) I have gone through several tissues crying with laughter…and am no longer sleepy at all.
…so thanks…I needed this!
Elie
That was xtremely funny, Betty!. Thank you — I needed that!
John Revolta
@Hungry Joe: That’s a great scene. I love when he drawls “…………..very dangerous…………………” as the wheels start coming off.
Jay
@A Ghost To Most:
Yup, Steve went on to have two great kids.
We had lot’s of sports related moments, pushing the boundaries.
Underneath the chairlift at Grouse Mnt, epic air, doing a Quebec Air Force inspired helocopter stunt, my brother “stuck the landing”, by completely disappearing into an 8′ snow drift. It took all of us two hours to find all his gear.
Me doing the cliff jump at Blackcomb. You edge out onto a ledge. Then you jump to clear a lower ledge. Then you ride the cliff, keep from being slammed by gforces back onto your skis, rip across the bottom, ride up the moraine at high speed, then into the mogul field on the back slope.
So I jump, the tails of my skis clip the lower ledge, and release. No skis. The bowl spits me out 15′ airborne into the mogul field, and I come to rest in a tree well.
Tom Q
Well, Betty, I can’t fully match yours (which is outstanding), but my funniest-moment-I-can-recall story:
I was back home from college for the summer. A friend was visiting. It was the days when I was still going to church, so we went to the late afternoon Mass. My friend had decided it’d be hilarious to put 50-100 pennies into the collection plate, so he carried them with him to church.
Mass was crowded, and we had to sit in the choir loft — front row. For whatever reason, the collection plate didn’t make it up there, so my friend still had all the pennies in his hands when bells started ringing for us to kneel and start the post-collection part of the service.
The kneeler had somehow slipped out of position, so my friend had to awkwardly grab for the front of the loft to keep his balance. As you might guess, the pennies left his hand and went flying down into the main floor congregation. About half of the people looked up in WTF-is-this? mode; maybe some of them thought it was a miracle.
We died laughing. And, of course, the fact that we were in church, the place you’re least allowed to laugh, made it even more difficult to contain. We had to bail quickly, before too many of my parents’ friends saw who it was creating the commotion.
I’ve had other uncontainable laugh moments in life — though not in years. That one remains top of the list.
John Revolta
@Mnemosyne: For me it’s the shot of the audience at the end of the number.
I’m laughing now just thinking about it.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
Mine isn’t so much a something I saw personally, but a story I heard. It involved my mother and a restaurant that’s no longer around anymore.
The restaurant was a Greek place that served fried chicken along with other things and it’s name had Uncle Nick in it. It had a drive-thru and she was picking up food for us.
Apparently, they didn’t have what we usually ordered prepared and she remarked to employees at the window that she would have to tell “Nick” since we did business with him, driving away afterwards. The problem? There was no such person named Nick. The owner’s real name was something else. I can only imagine the laugh the employees got at my mother’s expense! To this day I still chuckle when I think of it and she does too.
Salty Sam
This one could have been in an episode of “Oww, My Balls!”
Sailing in Galveston Bay with my brother- I’m at the helm, he’s working the sheets. We go to tack, the jib sheet jams- he straddles the cockpit coaming while he struggles to clear the jammed sheet. By that time, the jib has filled with wind on the new tack, putting a huge load on the sheet. He has a death grip on the sheet when it finally breaks the jam, which pulls him (still astraddle the coaming) smack into the sheet winch, right in the crotch. He groans, rolls onto the cockpit floor into a classic fetal curl. I start laughing, but ask, just in case, “Are you OK?”
His meek, high pitched, “Noooo!” reduced me to helpless laughter. I almost lost control of the boat and put us on the rock jetty.
Seems like the best humor comes at someone else’s expense…
TeezySkeezy (formerly the T S you hate)
Maybe when a cowbird snuck up on my sleeping german shepherd, cocked its head to get a good look at its target, and then pecked the dog in his nostril.
Hilarity ensued. But the bird escaped.
Yutsano
@John Revolta: Well at least that one posted. But nyms are not sticking at all for me right now. Oh well, I can be patient.
THE WILD TURKEY STORY:
A good friend from college was getting married at a resort just outside of Dahlonega. But she lived in Woodstock which is just north of Atlanta. We had met up at her place and I agreed to drive her up to the resort for some pre-wedding things.
And we got lost. Like way lost.
She knew the highway the resort was on but she wasn’t sure how to get on it from 75. So we took a massive road trip through the backwoods of Georgia. We saw beautiful horse farms, deep woods, and even came across some real backwoods types.
As we came to a relatively flat stretch of road we could see something standing in the middle. At first we couldn’t tell what it was but as we got closer we could see it was a big tom turkey! I figured as I got closer he would move. He didn’t. I slowed down to give him more time but he still didn’t budge. Finally I got to bumping him with the bumper of my rental car to get him to move. He. Still. Didn’t budge. Neither of us wanted to get out of the car because he was a big boy and he probably could have done us some serious damage. After about five minutes he turned his head towards the right side of the road and just slowly sauntered over there. After about three minutes he was finally out of the way enough to get past.
My friend and I laughed for the next ten minutes after.
cynthia ackerman
@Tom Q:
Pennies from heaven …
hitchhiker
Elder daughter in a Christmas Eve service, at about age 4 or 5, just before she became literate. Congregation is singing The First Noel, which she recognizes enough to sing the chorus in her own existential interpretation. With her head back, at top volume.
Oh-oh well, oh-oh well! Oh-oh well, oh well. Born is the ki-ing of Israel!
Kelly
My college transport was a 1956 Ford 1/2 ton. Went up skiing in a massive snow storm and the windshield wiper gear stripped out. My buddy and I tied baling twine to a wiper, ran it through the wind windows and headed for home with him pulling the wipers back and forth. Almost home a State patrol man saw us and pulled us over. He complimented us on our jury rig and ran a quick safety check. All the signals worked then he asked me to try the parking brake. It was one where you pull a t handle straight back. Well I was a strong young man, a little nervous and pulled it right out of the dash. Held it up with the frazzled cable dangling, my mouth and eyes completely wide open, speechless. The trooper almost fell down laughing and said go on home.
Kelly
That’s wing windows
Kent
I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala in the late 80s assigned to work in beekeeping with the Africanized (killer) bees. My Guatemalan counterpart and I were building a teaching apiary at a local coffee plantation and we got a donation of about 10 beehives from another farm that wanted rid of them because they were way too aggressive and unmanageable. The normal method of moving behives is to seal them up at night with strips of window screen material in the entrance then load them up onto a truck and move them the next day. So we managed by hook and crook to borrow a Ministry of Agriculture pickup one saturday and went out the night before to seal up all the behives
The next morning when we arrived with the truck to load up the hives, all the bees were buzzing around as normal. They were flowing out from under most of the hives where it turns out there were cracks in the wood. So we learned that beehives built in rural Guatemala are not really designed to be picked up and moved ever unlike hives made in the US which are designed to be moved. So what to do? That was the only day we had the truck and it wasn’t likely we would get ahold of it again anytime soon. We decided to haul them anyway. So we suited up and loaded all 10 hives into the back of the Toyota pickup and took off via the most remote back roads we could think of to get to the coffee plantation we were moving the hives to.
About half way there we come around a corner and sitting in the middle of the road is a big army roadblock. There were a couple of armored personnel carriers along the side of the road and about 20 soldiers sitting around with automatic weapons. Anyone familiar with Guatemala in the 1980s knows that the country was still coming out of a long civil war and that they army was still conducting brutal repression in the rural areas. And basically just hassling the population. We still have our bee suits on. We pull up and I lean out the window and shout to let us through because we are carrying bees and can’t stop. The soldiers in front look back to their officer who struts up waving his hands to stop. He was not listing to us, he was bound and determined to get his bribe.
So I shrugged and looked at my counterpart Pedro who was Cakchiquel Mayan Indian and somewhat frightened and upset with the situation. I looked to the back of the truck and 10 hives with or Africanized bees were starting to boil out, upset from being bounced around and shook up for the past 15 minutes of rural dirt roads. And then I looked forward at the soldiers who were suddenly swatting themselves, jumping up and down and screaming and then seconds later they were all running fast as they could go into the forest along the side of the road. 20 seconds later the checkpoint is completely deserted. A few galil automatic rifles are scattered around on the ground but all that is left is two empty armored personnel carriers and some screaming and crashing through the jungle in the distance.
I start cracking up, Pedro starts laughing so hard I think he is going to pee his pants. I say “you think we can go now?” he nods and motions me forward so I gun it and we drive off leaving a deserted army checkpoint and soldiers still crashing around screaming in the dense forest along the side of the road. We finally pull up to the farm where we were going to set up the beehives about 10 minutes later, drove way to the back where we had terraced out a hillside and just sat there and laughed for at least 5 minutes before we finally unloaded the beehives and set them up. By then we were surrounded by angry buzzing clouds of thousands of bees and we still couldn’t hardly get them set up because we were laughing to hard. There were so many angry bees we had to build a small bonfire of dried cornhusks to make enough smoke to chase them away, our little smoker cans weren’t doing it. But we finally managed to get back into the truck without too many bees following us to take the truck back to the office. We made as wide of a detour as we could to avoid going anywhere near that road block and never did hear what happened to all those soldiers. But it was sure some poetic justice for my counterpart who had lived his whole life under a repressive military regime.
Ninedragonspot
@Kent: I love this story.
lgerard
Back in the day i went to a wedding rehearsal dinner. The bride’s parents were serious religious types, so this was a pretty formal occasion. It was held in a back room in a restaurant which opened onto a garden area. They were short a few chairs, so they brought in a couple from the garden. The bride’s mother, who was a very. very large woman chose one of those as they were bigger and more comfortable,
The evening had reached the point where everyone had so much to eat and drink and were now sitting back a little dazed. The bride’s mother had tilted her chair back against the wall to relax.
All of a sudden a gunshot rang out. Well that’s what I thought it was. Actually it was the legs of the bride’s mother’s chair snapping and depositing her on the floor with a thud that everyone in the room could feel. There a was dead silence.
After a few seconds that seemed like minutes a hysterical cackling was heard from underneath the table, and we could stop trying to hold it in, I remember the minister, who was sitting across from me, taking off his glasses to wipe away the tears because he was laughing so hard.
CaseyL
@Kent: OK, I think you win. Not only funny, but with justice meted out!
Jay
Canoe trip down the Maramchie,
After the first day, rain, rain, rain, packs floating in the canoes.
Shortly after the rain starts, in camp, Phillip bounces an ax off the chopping block and buries it in his calf. Weird, all meat, no blood, but we lose 3/4’s of our “adult supervision”, as they paddle upstream to take Phillip to the hospital.
Rain, rain, rain,
So, the flotilla pulls into a back, to check maps, and I, wearing a green vynel poncho, steps out of the bow to bring the canoe ashore.
Clear, cold, clean Canadian water,
So those wern’t pebbles on the bottom, but boulders,
And instead of stepping into inches of water, 8 feet,
And I go floating downstream with my poncho spread out on the surface like an oil slick.
Ruckus
I used to work with a man who had a huge mane of hair, which had turned bright, stark white when he was 28. He grew a mustache while on vacation and came back to work with a black mustache. Not dark, full on raven black. The black mustache was fine, the white hair was fine. But the combination was not. People could not contain themselves. They tried they really did. But to a person they laughed out loud.
Another time I was driving a truck back to the office and had to listen in on one of our weekly conference calls while driving, along with the people concerned with the call who worked out of the office. Of course a person cut me off and as most of you know I have been known to swear just a tad. I let loose with a long string of invectives while trying not to kill this person and of course the entire crew on the phone heard me. I was about a minute away from the office so, not having killed both the person and myself I walked into the conference room. People were trying, they really were, to hold it in. But they couldn’t and ran out laughing, tears running down. Some days at work are just the worst. This wasn’t one of them.
...now I try to be amused
When I was in college, two friends and I drove from East Lansing, Michigan to a game convention in Ottawa. It was an 8+ hour drive and we didn’t get started until afternoon, so we arrived at the edge of town after 1 AM not knowing the way to the University downtown. Of course we would be in a residential area where nothing was open so there was no one to ask for directions. One of us remarked “You can never find a cop when you need one” just before we passed a police academy, also dark. By now we were desperate to find the damn University so we could check in to the dorm and get some sleep.
Finally we enter a part of town with some lights on, and there’s a motel. Our driver got out to talk with the man working there. The other two of us were still in the car, but we could hear the conversation.
Driver said: “We’re lost.”
(pause)
“We’re Americans.”
The latter remark was so unnecessary, in my fatigued delirium it was the funniest thing I’d ever heard. Same for the other guy in the car with me. I wonder what the motel man thought of the howls of laughter coming from the car.
Ruckus
@Kent:
I should have read the comments before I posted. Would have saved some typing.
Thread won. One of the all time best stories.
Jay
Up on the Blackwater,
50′ Canadian Shield cliff, with a 15′ deep hole in the river below.
So, cliff jumping.
So to top us all, my brother decides to combine cliff jumping and skinny dipping,
Bad idea.
Kent
@Ruckus: Well thanks. 30 years later it is still one of my most vivid memories of that time.
Omnes Omnibus
I am at my parents’ house for the holiday weekend and my brother’s family had to go away for a wedding on s-i-l’s family. Dad and I have been walking, feeding, etc., bro’s dog. Today, my dad brought a ball along on the walk. On the common wall route, there is a fenced in tennis court at local elementary school and the dog loves to play fetch/catch on it. Today before we got to the tennis court, the dog (by smell?) realised that my dad had a ball in his pocket and started to try to get it. My dad had a 75# labridoodle shove his entire face into the front, right pocket of his shorts and nearly got departs. Not the funniest thing ever, but recency should count.
John Revolta
So, what’s interesting about most of these stories is they involve something bad happening to somebody and some other body laughing.
The weird thing is, apparently this isn’t universal. In China nobody would think these stories were funny at all. I read an article about an American who went to China an became a comedian, sort of in the Yakov Smirnoff vein. He said that Chinese humor is very different; gentler I believe he described it. One thing they don’t find funny is when bad things happen to people. Damn Commies, amiright?
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Recency counts
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: depantsed.*
*Edit would be nice.
Jay
@John Revolta:
“Damn Commies, amiright?”
Lots of different kinds of funny,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5H3RNiXlxkc
Ruckus
@Kent:
I’ve known a couple of people that were in the peace corp and they had good stories but nothing that good.
Good funny stories are ones that happen when you are doing something different than normal and something unexpected happens. Great one’s involve both possible trouble and a way out that you had really nothing to do with that just works. Your’s is about the best example I’ve heard.
ProfDamatu
Not something I saw, but….
Back in college, one winter break I went with my family to visit an aunt and uncle in Vail. Of course, skiing was on the menu! I know the first day out, my aunt and uncle were thinking I should have been put in ski school, my skills were so rusty, but I managed to pick it up again fairly quickly. Anyway, by the third day I was feeling confident enough in my skills to try a double black diamond. It was my first run of the day; I think I was the first person on the lift that morning. I managed to get down the slope in one piece, and was feeling pretty pleased with myself!
As I headed back down toward the chairlift, I tucked my poles under my arms to adjust my goggles, still moving reasonably fast (though it didn’t feel as fast compared to going down the hill!). A little loose powder drifting across the way…and my tips crossed without my noticing. I flew head over heels, landed on my back, slid a couple dozen meters on my ass, then managed to get my skis under me and stop in a spray of snow. At that point, I heard a bunch of raucous cheering and laughter – apparently the chairlift had stopped for a few minutes, and several cars’ worth of people had gotten a bit of entertainment! :-) I laughed the rest of the way back to the lift.
Suzanne
The time my structural engineering professor accidentally drew a jizzing cock on the whiteboard, and didn’t realize it until he noticed that we were all trying and failing not to laugh. His reaction once he grokked it was just hilarious.
John Revolta
@Jay: “Fresh-squeezed Jesus” LOL
Suzanne
There was another incident in which I too-swiftly around while wearing socks on a freshly-waxed wooden floor and became airborne and absolutely crashed to the ground in front of some guests.
Another incident at my cousin’s wedding in which two of my other cousins and I (we were late teens at the time) were absolutely in hysterics because one of the wedding guests was shitfaced and he started loudly laughing during the ceremony, which caused us to laugh, and our parents were really mad and they kept tapping on us to get us to shut up, which just made it worse and we could not stop.
Spawn the Elder’s first band concert, which sounded exactly like an exceedingly loud metallic fart.
Spawn the Younger went on a tear recently about butts falling out (don’t ask) that had me almost vomiting I laughed so hard.
John Revolta
Interesting fact: flyswatters don’t work on stucco.
Jay
@John Revolta:
Can’t have that processed Jesus, or the frozen concentrate Jesus,
and I like how he admitted his Mom won.
JustRuss
Since this is BJ, I’ll go with pets: Years ago, I had an awesome cat who was quite the huntress. One day she struts into the carport with a bird in her mouth, quite pleased with herself. She drops her prey and starts batting it about with her paws…but it’s not….quite….dead. The bird flaps furiously, and gets about a foot off the driveway and heading west fast. Cat gives chase, but the bird is flapping for all it’s worth, slowly gaining altitude while staying just ahead of the pursuing cat. After a few seconds it’s 5 feet high and still climbing, and heading across the street, and the cat realizes this bird is out of reach and gives up the chase. The look on her face…I’ve never seen a cat look so dejected, it was absolutely priceless.
Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)
@SiubhanDuinne: Thank you!
Jay
Casey farts. Silent But Deadly,
She would always wake her self up, leave the room with a backwards look of “you people!”
Seconds later, it would hit, and we’d be gagging.
J R in WV
@Mnemosyne:
We went to the neighbor’s house to see a Cheech and Chong movie, and they had some magic Shrooms,which we all ate before starting the video. So I wasn’t surprised to fall out of my chair laughing so hard I hurt myself by pulling muscles in my side.
I was by far the funniest thing ever seen by the others in the room. They had to help me up off the floor, and I was holding my right side, where I hurt from laughing so hard… not sure if it was Cheech or Chong that put me down like that…
Sister Golden Bear
Back in the day….
Was about to get frisky with a girlfriend, who was pausing to put in her diaphragm. Which was slippy with lube and shot out of her hands across the room. Naturally her kitty pounced and was delighted with the new cat toy.
Girlfriend was not amused, but I was in hysterics.
Keith P.
Hard to say without really thinking about it (and not including TV/movies), but off the top of my head, when I was a kid, my brother and I were in our (big) front yard, hauling leaves in wheelbarrows from a neighbors yard to our compost heap. My brother is lagging, so my stepdad yells “JOE, HURRY UP!” My brother keeps at his pace, so my stepdad yells it again and then takes off *at* my brother, like he was going to tackle him. About 10 feet from my brother, my stepdad trips on a root and falls flat on his face. He gets up and says “Next time I say ‘hurry up’, hurry up” and walked off.
#2 would be one time about about 5:30 in the morning, I heard loud music and weird groaning noises. My brother and I go to see what it is, and it’s our stepdad in his office, with a beer in his hand, headphones on but the stereo blaring a Dr. John CD while he’s dancing around going “AYOOO AH WOO YAYO” gibberish.
oatler.
@Jay: and THERE’S a goddess I want to follow!
OzarkHillbilly
My wife, for whom English is her 4th language, once said, “You know, spotted like a zebra!”
opiejeanne
We have a youngish cat named Annie and she is a fearsome hunter. Mice and voles and shrews shudder in terror when she’s allowed out with a chaperone, but moles haven’t gotten the word yet. We have molehills in our lawn and some holes that look suspiciously like gopher holes. She decided that one smelled interesting and stuck a paw down the hole as far as her shoulder; I mean, she was really reaching into that hole and then she kind of jerked, reacted in a way that let me know she’d caught something. She pulled her paw back out and looked at what she’d snagged, and it was one of the biggest slugs you’ve ever seen in your life. They get really big here but this one was trophy size. She just stared at that thing and started shaking her paw in disgust to get rid of it, “EWWW! GET IT OFFA ME!!!” Exactly the way a kid would react. It was hilarious.
Dave and I just about fell over laughing.
OzarkHillbilly
I worked in an office when I was 20 or so. I had a bad knee that was bothering me terribly one day and a kind secretary gave me an aspirin. About a half hour later I was having trouble breathing, could not figure out what was going on. Then, “BING!” the answer came to me: I was having an allergic reaction. Eventually my shortness of breath peaked and my breathing started to return to normal. I knew I had passed the danger zone so I went to the secretary and said, “By the way, what does one do for an allergic reaction to aspirin?” The look on her face, a combination of fear/horror was so complete I exploded in laughter, could not stop.
It was decided somebody should take me to the hospital just to be on the safe side so she and one of the guys took me. By this point I had gotten my laughing under control. We got on the elevator at the 20th floor, it was crowded with quitting time people. All of whom acted as though they were the only person on the elevator. I started laughing again, could not stop, as they all acted like they were totally alone in the car. By the time we got to the ground floor, every single person was laughing hysterically.
But the funniest thing was, I was the only person there who knew why.
Turns out one of the side effects to being allergic aspirin is one can get high as a kite.
donnah
My dad was the ultimate home repair guy, and he always created quick fixes for tasks to make things easier. One afternoon he needed to stir paint in the can to paint the kitchen, so he decided to use his power drill with a paddle-type attachment to make it easier. I was standing just inside the kitchen door, watching to see him at work.
He pried the lid off the can, stuck the mixer blade into it, and turned the drill on. Whrrrr, a perfect circle of paint was spun out of the can onto the driveway. “Shit the bed” he said, which sent me into a fit of muffled giggles. He patiently wiped up the paint with a rag, tinkered with the drill setting, checked the paddle, and got ready to try again.
Whrrrr, and another perfect circle of pain flung onto the driveway, albeit a smaller circle.
“Sonofabitch” he said, reaching for the rag. I dissolved into peals of laughter, running back into my bedroom so he couldn’t hear me. I still laugh whenver I remember that.
Oh, and he got a wooden stir stick after that.
miroker
Out in my boat pulling up to island for a break. Person was going to jump off bow to stop us, even though was not needed. His shorts got caught on the rope guide and he ended up hanging upside down from it while boat glided on up to shore. Sort of ran over his head before we could get him loose.
Argiope
Mr. Argiope and I had a cat when we got married, and his favorite thing to do was to jump into the window next to the toilet in the bathroom and sit there being petted while one of us was a captive audience. He used the screen as a backstop in summer, since the window hinged outward from the top when it was open. When we went off for our June wedding trip, he boarded at the vet while we enjoyed Hawaii and our landladies started having the Victorian house painted. We picked him up from the vet on the way home from the airport, jetlagged as anything but prioritizing getting everyone home. Upon arrival, we hauled our suitcases up the stairs to our second floor apartment and I went to answer a call of nature. The cat followed, just as I sat down, and jumped up to the window….and sailed right out of it because the screens had been removed for painting. I became hysterical for the first and only time in my life–terrified but laughing so hard I could barely breathe. Looked down 20 feet from the window and watched him slink, marine-crawl style, around the back of the house. He was wary of that window henceforth, but otherwise apparently unharmed.
Tokyokie
@Mnemosyne: I, too, was rolling on the floor the first time I saw the Springtime for Hitler segment from The Producers, which would have been its network TV premiere, probably 1970. I was causing such a commotion, that my father came into the family room from the other side of the house, looked at the TV, and sadly shook his head, saying, “Stupid.” Then he looked at me and said the same thing. I only laughed harder.
However, the funniest thing I ever personally saw came while riding the subway in Tokyo probably about 1997. I was sitting in the middle of a subway car when a yakuza boss and his flunky boarded the car, standing directly in front of me. (I could tell he was a yakuza by the way he talked — the lowest level of politeness imaginable and the way he was dressed — matching workout togs that had never been used for exercise but which were obviously expensive and could cover all his tattoos — and the fact that he had a flunky with him meant that he was at least a midlevel yak.)
Anyway, he would scream a stream of obscenities into his cellphone only to realize that he’d lost his signal, whereupon the flunky would hand him a second cellphone. He’d scream a stream of obscenities into it only to lose his signal again, whereupon the flunky handed the first phone back to him. He repeated this cycle several time over a couple of stops, his voice getting louder and louder as his frustration grew greater and greater, and the flunky wasn’t about to tell him that cellphone coverage in the Tokyo subway system back then was spotty at best.
But the funniest part was not being able to laugh, knowing that would cause the yak boss to lose face and for me to suffer a terrific beating, if not something worse. When the yakuza and his underling exited after a couple of stops, the Japanese on either side of me and I all burst out laughing uncontrollably. But we waited to do so until the subway doors were safely closed.
Another Scott
@Argiope: I saw a video of that!! (0:04)
Cheers,
Scott.
Jersey Tomato
Lots of lowest common denominator humor for me. What can I say? I grew up in a house full of boys. Two separate instances, both of which involved my young nephews: One year at Christmas time, my brother and his family were visiting my mother. We were all sitting around drinking and my brother was talking about how much trouble they were having toilet training my nephew. Brian hears what we’re talking about, drags a toy drum he’d gotten that morning into the room, sits down on top of it and starts blowing raspberries as if he’s farting. I laughed so hard I nearly pulled a muscle.
A few years later the same brother and his family were visiting my mother during the summer time. One night the washing machine backed up and flooded my mother’s basement. She called the plumber who discovered a blockage in the pipe leading from the house to the sewer. It was a pair of my younger nephew’s underwear. He had sharted and didn’t know what to do with the evidence, so he flushed his underwear down the toilet. The best part was the plumber’s bill, which included the notation “retrieving Kevin’s underwear.”
Miss Bianca
@Kent: I think you win. And I say that as someone allergic to bee stings. ; )
My funniest moment that I can recall also comes in a movie theater. My high school buds and I were watching the original (animated) Lord of the Rings movie. The best effect they managed in that movie was the way they animated the Black Riders – unlike the flat way the main characters were animated, the Black Riders were tracings of real guys, real horses, and they were *really*, actually, scary. So, we’re all huddled down in our seats, watching the Black Riders get closer and closer to Frodo and his friends, when suddenly a childish treble rings out from the from of the theater: “HORSIE!”
Way to grasp the salient detail of the scene, kiddo! Totally broke the mood – the entire theater cracked up.
J R in WV
OK, may be a dead thread, but wife just reminded me of one of the funniest things we ever saw…
We had done a road trip to Asheville NC, which was fun. We had a new car which was built for speed in terms of carving curves, and one of the many places we drove was on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which has a strict speed limit, but is so curvey that in many places driving that fast is a challenge.
We stopped at a folklore museum, which was pretty much a sweet spot, as we were both raised immersed in that culture, and enjoyed that a whole lot. When we came out of the museum,
there was a brand new mustang parked in the shade, with a big red rooster sitting on the console of the ‘tang. The whole back of the car was full of chickens, and the rooster seemed to have escaped into the front of the car!
Think of how much damage unattended chickens could do to a brand new Mustang in like 15 minutes!?! Before we walked away to our car the came out – it was a rescue effort for the flock of chickens, they were taking them home to their farm. Mostly the car interior was covered by a tarp and the birds were huddled together in this new artificial environment.
Chickens! Ina Mustang!! Trust me, it was really funny, and kinda sweet too to find out it was a rescue. Props to Wife for reminding me of that sight!
JWL
By the age of 10, this would rank as my all time funniest moment: Two good friends of my mine were brothers, and we went to a carnival in the parking lot of a local shopping center. The brothers got on a ride called The Hammer. With a few moments of the ride’s wickedly intense revolutions, one brother could be seen frantically pounding on the side of the wire cage they were trapped in, screaming for the operator to stop the ride. Which, of course, the operator did not do. So it proved a good thing, then, he had a hose nearby to spray the vomit off the inside of the cage. I’ll never forget the looks on the brothers faces, or the sight of those two when the ride finally ended, and they exited covered head-to-toe in barf. Up until that moment, no one had understood what the one brother had been screaming about, but in that instant everyone did, and everyone there began laughing so hard they cried.
That was over fifty years ago, but if I ever run into the two brothers again theres no doubt we’d all laugh and remember the incident perfectly. Especially them, I’ll guess, even though they were the only ones not laughing that day, as they trudged the long mile and half back home, with the one brother cursing the other the whole way..
gammyjill
In 1973, my best friend and I graduated a quarter early from the University of Denver. We decided to take a 2 month trip to Europe. We bought 1st class Eurail passes. One of the cities we visited was Venice, where we kept seeing these dreadful, cheap plastic gondolas in store windows. We wondered, “Who buys this dreck??”
A week or so later we were on a train from Vienna to Prague. We were in a compartment with a pale, skinny, young Czech guy, who had a huge… valise. When the Czech border guard came in to check our passports and our bags, she cleared Pat and I in an instant. She then told the young man to bring down his…valise. When he opened it up, it was filled with the dreadful, cheap plastic gondolas. Well, Pat and I just completely dissolved in hysterical laughter on the floor of the compartment. SO, we had the guard screaming at us to behave and the young guy for bringing this dreck into the country. They hauled the guy and his gondolas off the train.
Pat and I still laugh about it today, or we would, if we were talking.
Pat and her rich doctor husband are Trumpies. I haven’t talked to her in two years. Oh, well….
J R in WV
OK, last time, I promise.
A Wedding story… my first cousin’s daughter, A, a wonderful person, speech pathologist, mother, kind, compassionate, beautiful. She planned her wedding at a Hilton near their home outside Pittsburgh, and it was a real good party. Like a family reunion too, cousins I grew up with, we spent all summer at our grandfather’s pool, scrubbing it clean once a month, swimming in trout-stream cold water the rest of the time.
The wedding itself was in a room sometimes used for private dinners, so there were swinging doors into the kitchens. A’s aunt, my other cousin, was assigned to read part of First Corinthians, chapter 13 about love, and it’s a beautiful piece of the Bible:
When V got to the part of the quote I have bolded, Sounding Brass or a clanging Cymbal someone in the kitchen dropped a huge tray of metal dish covers onto the floor, right behind the door behind the priest. The biggest clamor of Brazen Cymbals you could imagine, ever, dozens of them!!!
It was a show stopper to say the least! Everyone broke up, including the priest, and it took a while before my cousin V could recover her composure to continue her wonderful reading. We all wondered what other sound effects V may have arranged. I would not put it past her at all, she was a theater major!!
BethanyAnne
I guess it’s a prank, but I didn’t have time to think. My wife came home from gymnastics, super excited. She had just learned to do that move where you bend over backwards and land on your hands. She launched herself backwards, and precisely when her hands hit the carpet I let loose with a perfect “Mrow!” Like one of her hands had hit one of our cats instead of carpet. She collapsed, and almost started to look around, but by that time I was collapsed, too. Laughing. Oooo, she got up with blood on her mind. Totally worth it, tho.