Inappropriate Laughter

[MetalPants]

Have you ever laughed at something at an inappropriate time? You could be sitting at something deep and serious and then all of the sudden a funny idea pops into your head and you can't help but chuckle .

As a personal example once I was reading a book and had gotten to a really funny part and began to chuckle. Unbeknownst to me, the people around me were discussing a local news story of a girl who had been raped and murdered.

Please tell me this has happened to other people.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Please tell me this has happened to other people.

Nope. When I laugh, it's people around that suddenly feel inappropriately serious.

 

[Jono]

Be warned those who dare watch this video will be brought low by its mighty power.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iKjkPgVQcE[/yt]

Just thinking about the Giggle Loop nearly made myself pee my pants during a formal dinner while someone was delivering a serious speech about something. Though I admit I had been drinking so my defenses had been lowered.

 

[JarodRussell]

I heard a lot of inappropriate laughter in John Rambo. Everytime someone was killed, tortured, blown to bits, people in the cinema laughed and cheered.

 

[Sparky]

I have a tendency to crack up when people are angry. The angrier they get, the more I laugh. It got me in a lot of trouble with my parents when I was younger....of course it provided me with a lot of laughs too

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I laugh inappropriately at everything. People think I'm a psycho. I do nothing to dispel this perception.

 

[Lonemagpie]

All the time

 

[TheSeeker]

Laughter is a natural stress reliever so although it may seem inappropriate in certain situations it is sometimes impossible to stop yourself from doing so.

I remember one time a friend and I witnessed a car skid off the road and crash through the the fence of the house across the street from us. We rushed over to see if the guy was ok and when we saw that he was we both starting laughing.

The son of the driver had been right behind his father at the time of the accident so he was right behind us and when he heard us laugh and he wasn't too impressed.

 

[Captain Shaw]

My at Little brother made me and everyone in my row laugh, at my grandmothers funereal.
Also me and my mum had a laugh when we went to the undertakers.

 

[Kestra]

I giggle a lot and it's infectious so occasionally it's inappropriate. I think most people experience this at some point in their life and wouldn't judge too harshly.

 

[TheGodBen]

I was at a funeral last year when they started saying the rosary, and it was like I was hearing it for the first time and realised just how ridiculous it is. By the time they got to the fourth or fifth repetition of Hail Mary, I started chuckling and then each time it was repeated I started laughing a little more and I had to put my hands in front of my face to hide it. I just had this vision of a god up in the heavens looking down on this crowd and being really impressed by them wasting their time saying the same thing over and over again, and I found the concept of such a worthless god to be hysterical.

No offence to any Catholics, I just think that Jesus would be far more impressed if those people went out and did charity work and tried to make the world a better place than sitting around repeating the same prayer over and over again.

 

[ed629]

All the time, in one of my classes the teacher was talking about how field trips can be both good and bad, the example she used was about a kid drowning on a field trip and for some reason that got me laughing. I got glared at by the teacher and several students, and one student in my class (I've had several classes with her) said "I knew it was 'ed629' laughing without even turning around, he's got a morbid sense of humor"

And then when I was 5-6th grade we went on a field trip to learn about the holocaust, I saw someone out a window making faces, I laughed and had to spend the rest of the trip sitting in the bus, the teacher thought I was laughing at the holocaust when I wasn't.

 

[AriesIV]

Please tell me this has happened to other people.

Can't top the giggling-rape-and-murder but I've done the inappropriate-laugh thing a couple of times in my life.

You are not alone.

 

[propita]

I’ve been given the advice, “When you’re in pain, laugh.” Surprisingly, it’s helped sometimes.

 

[B.J.]

My at Little brother made me and everyone in my row laugh, at my grandmothers funereal.
Also me and my mum had a laugh when we went to the undertakers.

Heh. Reminded me of my grandmother's funeral. I was sitting next to my uncle, and at one point we were singing a psalm. To my ear, my uncle is the absolute worst singer in the world, and couldn't manage to get anywhere close to the right notes (or even stay on one note!). Unfortunately I didn't know this before the funeral, so I spent the rest of the service *literally* biting my tongue to keep from completely cracking up and laughing my butt off!

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I have a tendency to laugh at many things, especially things that other people either don't find funny or don't believe should be laughed at.

Laughter is the best defence mechanism we can have in the face of adversity. Sometimes, it's the only thing you can do.

 

[The Inquisitor]

I do it all the time, especially when children fall over or if I let a silent fart go, I cannot help but giggle. Also when I go into interviews, this can quite annoying.

 

[Holdfast]

I have quite a dark and vicious sense of humour when the mood takes me, since I find inappropriate juxtaposition very funny (it's the same core reason of why I also find wordplay funny). I tend to find many situations amusing, that others would not. However, I usually know when to share the inner laughter with others and when not to, and am generally fairly good at masking my amusement when I need to.

Online, I tend to cut a bit looser.

 

[Spot's Meow]

One time in a serious grad school seminar we were discussing rape and incest in colonial America. We were in a rather boring part and a friend who sat across the table from me had been goofing off and trying to get me to laugh, unsuccessfully. But then this much older man who sat near me started discussing his views on the topic, and started with something like, "Well, my close friends, who aren't anymore because they're all dead now..." and he actually meant it very seriously. But it was just the straw that broke the camel's back for me, and I burst out with a loud laugh/snort/cough combo that I tried to pass off as a strange sneeze. It was SO HARD not to smile. It was bad enough the topic was rape and incest, but laughing at someone's dead friends didn't seem very polite.

 

[Shatnertage]

This isn't laughter, but it's a little similar.

I have trouble hearing in crowded rooms, so a lot of the time when someone is talking to me, I just smile and nod, going more on their body language and cadence than what they're actually saying, which I can't understand. Once a guy was talking about his job (I caught that much), so I was just saying, "Great! Very exciting!" in response.


Somewhere along the line, he transitioned into telling me that his friend had died, and at the first pause I just gave a big smile and said, "Wonderful!" After he repeated himself, I was appropriately somber.