Things that were not meant to be funny

[Tinker Gnome]

Have you ever said something that yuo did not mean to be funny at all, but someone else found them hilarious? Once when we were waiting for a player to come, and I heardthe family dog barking, I said. "Oh, the dog is barking, <Player's name> must be here." because the dog barks when people come to the door. This had my older brother and one of my friends in the room lauhing for like five minutes.

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

Back in high school they did an annual Mr. GQ contest for senior men. As the only senior in my Model UN club (NERD!), I was selected to represent them.

There were three rounds: a tuxedo walk-on with an escort, a q & a with the judges, and a talent portion. I have to say, I cut a good figure in my tux. I threw in a couple good zingers during the q & a and got some legitimate laughs from the crowd. I was beginning to come off as the wit of the group, and that was just fine with me. I knew I'd get beaten in the looks department so I was going for personality, and I had that for days. But then came the talent portion, and that's when tragedy struck.

See, I was "that writer guy" in high school. School newspaper, literary magazine, I was a fixture. I could write a great article on assigned topics that I didn't care about at all, I had an awesome regular music column, and I did some funny essays for the magazine. But like any teenager who had had their heart trampled upon the previous summer, I decided the only way to express my pain was to become a poet. A god-awful poet.

So after hours of playing up my whole class clown angle, I get up for the talent portion and proceeded to read a dreadfully earnest poem I'd written a few months earlier called "Drowning". Skillfully written or not, I was up there baring my peachfuzzed soul.

And the audience thought it was another joke. A very funny one. In retrospect, it was sort of exhilirating. In all the years after, I haven't gotten laughs like that on purpose. I pretty much decided on the spot, mid-poem, to abandon the high-stakes world of poetry for comedy writing. I turned that goth dirge into a beatnik impression and didn't look back.

In the end, I lost to a guy who dressed in a leaf skirt and read from Dr. Seuss's The Lorax.

 

[der_kluge]

In 10th grade, one of the teacher's informed my mom of some unused scholarships to a German camp. This was a camp where you immersed yourself into German language and culture. It was 11 days long. It was actually pretty fun, even though I didn't speak a word of German. The camp was small too, probably not more than 25 people in the entire thing. Anyway, several of us guys spent our time trying to think of jokes to tell. We had to just tell them from memory because we didn't have any joke books on hand.

So, I'm sitting at the dinner table one night with the rest of my group (and all the other groups are there as well at separate tables) and during the meal I remembered a joke I needed to tell. So, I said, "Oh, I have a joke I can tell!" One of the counselors replied, "You can tell it to us after dinner". Fearing that I would forget it, and thus lose the opportunity I said, "No, I need to tell it now!"

The entire table just about fell out of their chairs.
Everyone in the entire room just stopped and stared at our table wondering what the heck had just happened. Of course, me being the only one not rolling on the floor assumed I'd said something very clever, which I hadn't. To this day, I haven't really figured out what was so funny. It must have been my mannerism.

And I never did tell that joke. I forgot it.

 

[Heretic Apostate]

For the last six years, I've worn my hair very short--under a quarter of an inch, if I could help it.

I've recently decided to let my hair grow out to a decent size. I was telling a female coworker that I planned on letting it grow as long as it was back in my senior year in high school (down to the bottom of my shoulder blades, with the bangs down to my chin).

My coworker leaned over and whispered that girls really don't go for the long hair. To which I drily replied, "Yeah, the short hair is really helping in that department."

That sarcastic/sardonic remark set my coworker off on a couple minutes of laughter...

Okay, it wasn't meant to be 100% serious (I'm never completely serious...), but still, that was more of a reaction than I was expecting.

 

[alsih2o]

To this day, I haven't really figured out what was so funny. .

I laughed till I hurt when I read this, it isn't just the mannerisms.

 

[Maldur]

Every spring a mate of mine turns on the AC unit for the first time, and he is rewarded with a nest of ants thrown at him. He doesnt think its funny ( a mouth full of ants, but I think its hilarious

 

[alsih2o]

Every spring a mate of mine turns on the AC unit for the first time, and he is rewarded with a nest of ants thrown at him. He doesnt think its funny ( a mouth full of ants, but I think its hilarious

You need smarter friends. This guy sounds like an idiot of epic proportions.

 

[Torm]

I was running a West End Games Star Wars premade module, with a few modifications to make it appropriate for my campaign, set in Mos Eisley and Jabba's Palace. One of the features of the module was a speeder bike gang that at one point would get into a dirty race with the PCs. The gang's leader was named "Big Giz", and I made the mistake of pronouncing this with a soft 'j' style G, instead of a hard G - several times.

The first time, there were a few snickers that I figured were about other side conversations that were going on - we all tend to sort of multitask during the games. As things went on, this grew more pronounced, but I remained oblivious until finally it came to a point in the game where one of the players had to announce an interaction with the gang leader, and used the name, fighting laughter through pronouncing it the same way I was. The room just completely came apart. THEN, they had to EXPLAIN to me WHY they were laughing - I hadn't even been thinking that way at all - and that just made things worse. I don't think the session really came back together for the rest of the day.

 

[devilish]

Hopefully this doesn't fall under "You had to be there...."

Handsome male thief in the party seduces npc bard -- thief goes
off to the next town for the adventure and meets up with local
farm girl. They go away from the party to watch the sunset.

Npc bard, so filled with love, decides to surprise the thief by riding
into town. The party says "Uh oh..." as they wait for the thief to
come back to his mess. The cleric of the party, seeing an opportunity,
tries to seduce the bard for his own self-interest, and also soften the
blow when she finds out what the thief was up to.

Cleric completely fumbles his seduction roll and ... without censoring myself ...
I (as the bard) say ..." Oh....you are such a good **friend**."

Everyone around the table howled in laughter.