h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't know why but I always laugh when someone gets hurt.

My dad fell down the stairs and slipped 5 discs - all I could do was laugh and laugh - poor dad he was in so much pain.

Another instance was when I was giving a speech to say thank you to a room full of runners for raising money for the charity I was working for at the time. There was a guy at the back with tight pink cycle shorts on and before I got on the stage to say my bit, my colleague made some funny comments about them.

All I could get out was "Thank you to everyone for your support" - then I burst out laughing and just couldn't stop - the visions I had of this guy in pink cycle shorts was hysterical.

What? Clause 3b in the "Giving a speech" handbook specifically states that it is perfectly allowable to laugh at someone weaing pink cycling shorts.

Sorry about the typo, everybody in Wales...

When a guy got run over by a bus in Lost like week I laughed and got a disapproving look. I regret to admit that I was watching that memory loss drama with David Tenant on BBC1 on sunday and when he got run over by a lorry I was very careful not to laugh. Am I a deeply unpleasant person or what?

lol thanks Elentari I'll definately remember that next time

No problem, I consider it my civic duty to make people aware of that very important fact.

I laugh during the gory bits in horror movies. Like in thirteen ghosts, there's a bit when some glass sliding doors close on a man. And the front half of his body slides down the glass. My lips are twitching just thinking about it.

When I was about ten years old, we were driving along, and there was a big accident on the side of the road, and my mother said, "i hope that nobody died." I laughed.

I think my laugh was for something having nothing to do with the accident or the statement, but needless to say, everyone in the car thought i was problematically morbid from that day on.

Too many times to recall.

Whilst doing a stint of jury service, I had the good fortune to sit next to one of the funniest people I'd met, I spent the most excrutiatingly challenging two weeks of my life attempting to stifle giggles until I was blue in the face.

Another time, I was helping prepare dinner with an ex boyfriend. It was a galley type kitchen, I was at one end peeling tatties at the sink, he was at the other fiddling about with the cooker. I opened the overhead cupboard just as he was walking toward me and thwacked the cupboard door right in his face. I collapsed in hysterical laughter attempting to apologise, the more annoyed he became, the harder I laughed.

This brings back memories of when I was a child and used to do this quite a lot when my brother was getting told off, usually I would get caught, which annoyed the out of my mum, then it would be me in trouble

I had that problem too, so now I am a parent I try not to get too annoyed with my children when I see the same thing happening!

I work for a Japanese manufacturing company. I was sitting in a majority-Japanese meeting the other day. My boss (Japanese) was giving a presentation about an upcoming project, mentioning in particular that new people would need to be recruited to operate the plant.

At that point, a commercial guy (also Japanese) piped up "Why do we need more people?". My boss looked at me and I looked at him and my boss carefully, in English, explained that the current operators in that area were being reassigned, so we would have to replace them. "Can we not engineer so we don't need people? We have brains." said commercial guy. Again, my boss and I exchanged looks - both of us thinking "Well yeah, of course you can. Automation is a good long-term investment..."

At that point, before either of us could speak, he added "But we cannot spend any more money."

He wanted us to engineer an *automated* system, but he wanted it for the price of a non-automated system. I laughed. Out loud. I really thought he was joking. Then I looked around the table and realised he wasn't. Doh.

SoRB

Perhaps your reaction might have been the best! Maybe make them realise just what they are asking!

Doesn't seem very likely, does it?