Restrained Laughter...

There are moments in life where - although something hilarious is happening right in front of our eyes and ears - we have to use every ounce of energy to hold back the laughter in order to avoid offending someone.

This thread is about sharing those moments.

Although I have a few, my favorite goes back about 12 years to when I was a sales manager at Circuit City.

If someone wanted to purchase a cell phone (before the days of prepaid plans), they had to fill out a credit application and show their driver's license as proof of ID. We typed the info. into a terminal provided by BellSouth (now AT&T) and received a response within about 10 minutes: No deposit, $100 deposit, $300 deposit or declined.

One Sunday, a salesperson waved at me to come in the office. Once inside, he burst into a fit of laughter and showed me the driver's license and credit app. for a a customer.

The customer's name was Phat Ho.

We had tears of laughter in our eyes while entering the info. into the terminal. Although we normally paged the customer back to the credit desk, it's obvious why I told the salesperson he'd have to wander through the store and find the customer without announcing his name over the PA system.

Adding to the restrained laughter misery, the customer became upset that he had to put down a $300 deposit in order to get a phone. The two minutes we spent trying to explain he'd have to contact BellSouth about the deposit issue seemed like an eternity since we were fixated on his unusual name. After he left, we ran back in the office; it took us each about 10 minutes to get over laughing and return to the sales floor.

What's your worst (or best) restrained laughter moment? Please post.

 

Oh lord. I have this thing with funerals, particularly those of close family members. I get giggling, and I can't stop. At a young age I trained myself to swallow sideways and put a hand in front of my mouth so the tears streaming down my face appear to be from sorrow rather than from hysterical laughter. A few highlights...

My grandpa's funeral, when I was 14. My sister and I did not know they would wheel the casket in from the back of the church to start the service. He was a veteran, so the coffin was draped with a flag. Which fluttered in the breeze as it moved. My sister leans over and says to me, "Coffee, tea, or grandpa?"

Fast forward to my grandma's funeral, when I was 35. She was cremated, and the urn we chose looked like the Acropolis. My nephew, who was about four, had been promised if he behaved throughout the ceremony there would be cake. He "whispers" (if you know kids, you know how quiet a whisper is) to my sister, "Is that where the cake is?"

And then my aunt's funeral last week Tuesday. First, checking in at the funeral home was an option on Foursquare, so to amuse myself I did. And became the mayor. I am eagerly anticipating the day someone takes the mayorship away from me, because who the #%$& wants to be mayor of the funeral home? Then, the pastor was relating her journey through cancer with the Lord like a shepherd leading his sheep in the Bible. Apparently, the sheep are afraid of dark places because there are predators there, like tigers. My sister and I (different sister, we're all alike) look at each other, and both of us say, "Wait...there are tigers in the Middle East?"

More from the same funeral. Whoever was in charge of playing music totally missed their cue, but after a good 15 seconds of silence the hymn starts playing. "In the Garden". As most of you know, I do theatre for a living. There's a show called "Nunsense" which has this running joke about God's name being Andy, because that particular song says, "And he walks with me, and he talks with me" (And he = Andy, get it?).

Luckily, most of my family gets it, and we all suffer from the same problem. But the extended family and various friends of the deceased tend to be a tad offended when we're sitting there laughing during the entire funeral service.

 

roflmao roflmao roflmao

 

I don't know if this counts because the laughter was only restrained for a few seconds. I was at the Calgary Zoo with friends. We were in the petting zoo section, and Mike and I were looking at a llama beside a couple of girls. One girl was petting the llama, and it seemed to enjoy it. She said to her friend "Look Mary he likes me". No sooner had she said this when the llama made a horking noise and spit all over the girl's left breast. I snorted and stifled my laughter because this poor girl was horrified.I turned to Mike to see his reaction and he was gone. I looked around and he was down at the pond washing spit off of himself. I lost it. I was literally rolling on the ground roaring out loud. Everyone was looking at me, the girls were glaring at me, but I could not stop. Life is good!
For the record llama spit is gross and it smells bad.

 

I took my friend to the Zoo quite a few years back. I thought it would be a nice, easy, relaxing day out. ~ Think again!
All went well until until we visited the Rhino enclosure. She was fascinated and went to take a close look. That was her mistake. The Rhino peed all over her. I don't know if any of you have ever smelt Rhino pee, but it is NOT good! I was trying not laugh and stirred the pot a bit saying "You aint getting in my car smelling like that, I'll hose you off first." Yeah, well that didn't go down too well and she was in 'pouting mode', so I just shut up and suggested we continue the Zoo tour for a while, since we're here already.
She wanted to check out the monkey section, and I thought that might take my mind off the foul piddle smell. So we do that, and get to the Chimpanzee cage, (there were still bars on the cages in those days). So I'm checking out the Chimp and all of a sudden it takes a dump on it's hand. That should have been my warning sign, but I turned to my friend and said, "Hey look - the monkey is playing with his crap! Then, as I turned my head and said that, I got pelted with the money doo-doo's. I'm on my knees, throwing up up and in between heaves, crying "That filthy S.O.B.!!...<*heave!!*>" uke
Of course she, and about 20 other bystanders were all laughing their collective butts off at me. Then a Zoo-keeper comes up and says, "Oh sorry, he does that when he gets bored". and goes away, (laughing, of course).
My friend says, "Can we go home now, I want catch a cab, 'cause compared to me, you smell like a monkey's bum." :-o:cry
(It was then my turn to pout all the way home). I still think I oughta sue that crummy Zoo!

 

I wonder, did the Zoo keeper have a yellow hat by any chance?

 

roflmaoroflmaoroflmaoroflmaoroflmaoroflmaoroflmaoroflmaoroflmaoroflmaoroflmaoroflmaoroflmaoroflmaoroflmaoroflmaoroflmao

 

Is this restrained laughter :confusedrolleyes

 

It's a question of if you had to restrain the laughter at the time the incident happened. Ater that, anything goes. :-D

 

Hell I don't feel like I've been on a trip out until I've had excrement thrown at me,botty baptism:-D

 

I don't have Asthma, but this has be laughing so hard I had an attack. No lie. :-D

I don't restrain my laughter very well... I can think of once or twice when others have tried to restrain their laughter though...

My daughter was 2 or 3, and I was trying on clothes. I was all alone so I had no choice but to bring her into the dressing room. It was a busy weekend and all the stalls were full. She sits quietly for a few minutes and then asks me, rather loudly. "Mommy? Why do you have such an ugly body?" Well, the snorting was almost simultaneous. Everyone trying not to laugh... but I got the last laugh. "Because this is a fat store, honey. Everyone has an ugly body here." (It was too.)

The next time they were 7 or 8 and I took my daughter and her sisters to the zoo, and on the boardwalk in a crowd her sister asks, "Nadie, why are those people wearing Tye Dye?" And my daughter pops up "Because that's what people wore a hundred years ago, back in the 70s" and the whole crowd lost it.

And the one time that I wish people HAD restrained their laughter... it was ninth grade math class, and we had just settled in to a test. The room was dead quiet, save the scratching of pencils, and I had to sneeze, badly. But I didn't want to disturb anyone, so when it came I stifled it... and farted LOUDLY into the dead quiet room, instead. The teacher couldn't restrain the class or even himself. He gave us 5 minutes extra to finish to make up for as long as it took the class to calm down. But not before gesturing exaggeratedly that he was waving air away from his face and opening a window. :-o

:-D LOL

 

Wenchies school fart reminded me of advanced GCSE french Listening exam:-D So it was my GCSE french exam the last exam in the UK before you go to college at 16,its important you have to do well otherwise there's no chance of going to college and your stuck in a dead end job for the rest of your life,well at least that's how most of us thought.

There's about 100 kids in the main hall sweating and wishing they'd studied harder so it completely quiet for about an hour as we listened to the French people speaking over the tannoy and tried to decipher it. As the exam wore on the questions got harder untii there was a beep over the tannoy signalling the advanced part and a conversation began between two French people,well?-D Everyone burst out laughing including me:-D It was incredible, hardly a single person in the whole year knew WTF they were gabbing about,I certainly didn't it may as well have been klingon.

This has stuck with me all my life,no one should have laughed,if anything people should have passed out or started crying. I'm sure everyone in the room was a little scared like in on of those school nightmares where you don't know the answers to the test or your naked all of a sudden but instead everyone burst out laughing.

I guess its lesson in the best way to deal with stress,I didn't feel so worried about the test after that

 

LoL, yep a U.F.O., (Unexpected Fart Odour) is always good for a laugh - except when it happens to YOU :-o.

That Chimp I told you about has a bit of a history to it. The monkey crap incident happened back in the '70's, (yeah, prehistoric times for fossils like me ). He used to be in he movies back in the 60's, being one of the "Cheeta's" Chimpanzee sidekicks for the old Tarzan movies with Johnny Weissmuller, (Tarzan, Jungle Jim, etc.). He got retired out, because he got too big and ugly and no longer cute.
Anyway, he used to wander around his cage blowing up balloons and smoking cigarette buts thrown in by bystanders, ( sooo wrong on every level, I know). I think he eventually died of lung cancer, not surprisingly. - Dunno whether he got the poo throwing habit from his movie days or what, (maybe that's really why they got rid of him, LoL! :-D ).

 

Not meaning this to be races. iam not racist. but back in the 80s my sister super young and still at that time. the explaining skin color wasnt undestood. my gdma took sister to doctor. well then my sister ask gdma why the people nxt to her were dirty