Recently, Jessi posted about her attack of guffawing laughter during a supposedly scary scene while watching Interview with the Vampire in a movie theater. I'm glad to know I'm not the only twisted person out there. Then again, Jessi and I are friends (at least I consider us to be so), so it would make sense for a twisted person to attract other twisted people as friends. I don't consider all my friends to be as macabre as I, but there's a nice mix of the twisted and non-twisted varieties of people amongst my "peeps".
Anyway, there's a blurb at the beginning of Jessi's post that reads:
Mama Kat's Weekly Writing Prompt: I sometimes laugh when I’m uncomfortable…or being yelled…or in church…or at a funeral. Write about a time when you laughed at an inappropriate time.
My first question to myself upon reading this was "which time?" Was it when I got an attack of the snort-in-the-back-of-your-throat laughter at my father's funeral? Was it when I couldn't help laughing at the phrasing of a letter to the editor? Let me explain a bit about both. I'll start with the oldest story.
When I worked for a certain hometown newspaper, one of my initial jobs before becoming a reporter and photographer was to type up all the letters to the editor, wedding/engagement announcements, birth announcements, etc. for publication in the paper. One day, a woman wrote in very upset about the people who drove at a high rate of speed on her road. This woman wrote in grieving because someone was driving very fast down her country road, hit their black lab and took off. There is nothing whatsoever funny about this scenario. Except....well....except for in my twisted mind. See, her letter said something to the effect of "and our poor Rover* was sitting in the road and they hit him. He was hard to miss." I immediately started laughing. My editor wanted to know what was so funny. I read him the letter. When I got to the part where they said their dog was "hard to miss" I laughed even harder and said "Obviously!" He looked at me with utter horror and contempt and asked what was so dang funny about that. I said, "They said their dog was hard to miss. Obviously he WAS hard to miss, otherwise the driver wouldn't have hit him!" (I would like to point out here that, to the best of my recollection, the dog was okay. Please don't write me snarky comments about being a dog-hater. I love dogs. They're very tasty**.)
As for my father's funeral, I may have already told this story, but I'll tell it again. Last year, my father was buried with full military honors at a national cemetery. Part of the ceremony involves the honor guard ceremoniously folding the flag to present to the family members. There's lots of slow movements, gentle stroking of the flag, precise movements. It took them a good 5-10 minutes just to unfold and refold the flag. Watching them stroke and fold the flag, all I could think was, "I will love him and pet him and call him George". I started giggling, then I started laughing, then I started snorting. All the while I was trying to keep it down, so everyone thought I was crying. But, really, I was laughing (incidentally, this made me think of the Mary Tyler Moore show about Chuckles the Clown).
I'm sure there are plenty of examples of times in middle and high school when I laughed at inappropriate things, but I don't remember much of those days. My clearest memories are of speech tournaments, fall plays and musicals. If it didn't involve speech, theatre or band, I don't remember much of it. Sorry!
So tell me: Do any of you have memories of times you laughed inappropriately? Leave me a comment about it, or post about it on your blogs and let me know you posted so I can go read it. I have this burning need to know I'm not the only twisted one!
*name changed to protect an innocent canine
**surely you know I'm joking, right? right?
Stinkbumps the Wonder Boy: The rants, ravings and ramblings of a lunatic, overachieving single mom.
2 comments:
I lost it in a training class at work. We were studying business process modeling using practical examples. The instructor abbreviated "Time and Attendance" as "T&A". I tried to keep quiet, but it's like church giggles--they cannot be quashed! He kept saying it and I kept snorting until finally, I was bent over, turned around in my chair, biting my fist. My coworker next to me was losing it too--as soon as I'd get it together, my coworker would snort and we'd both lose it.
Finally, like the tenth time the instructor said, "T&A", he paused and his eyes got really big. Then he said, "Oh, I get it!" I must note that I did apologize to him and the class for the disruption. Luckily, they were all coworkers and were somewhat amused.
Have you seen that the newest wrestling show is called TNA? Cracks me up every time.
Post a Comment