Come on, you know that you've sat around and decided your greatest comedic moment. What was it? When were you at your best? Was it something you said? Something you did?

Were there people there to bask in your glory?

-- Anonymous, September 22, 1999

Answers

I was having lunch with my boss on his last day at work, and his friend from out of town. I was talking about how many people I had watched come and go through the office in the last 2 years, and intended to make the comment, "If anyone else leaves, I guess I'm going to have to change my deodorant." Instead, I said "I guess I'm going to have to change my underwear." Well, I have no idea where that came from, but as soon as I realized what I had said I was mortified. Of course, the two men were cracking up, and I couldn't help but wonder what they thought must have been going through my mind to say that.

Another time, shortly after my previous boss had moved to KC to be a VP at the corporate office, I was talking to one of his underlings on the phone. A situation had come up that was going to force my ex-boss to make his first hard decision in the new VP position. I said, "Well, this will give him a chance to exercise his new VP-ness." Of course, it sounded like I said "...exercise his new V-penis". I turned red, and sat silent, because I didn't know the guy I was talking to very well, and wasn't really sure if he caught it. I think I just made some lame excuse to get off the phone, then laughed wildly about it with my coworkers. What a dork I am.

-- Anonymous, September 22, 1999

Oops. Those weren't comedic moments. Those were just stupid moments. Sorry Pamie, I should have paid more attention to the question.

-- Anonymous, September 22, 1999

I can't remember the funniest thing I've ever said (I'll come back later), but the funniest thing Greg Bueno (Book of Days) ever said to me was this:

Greg, Rebecca and I were in San Antonio for a concert. We were parking in the San Antonio RiverCenter garage and Rebecca saw the the car next to us had one of the Jack in the Box happy face balls on the antenna. She got all nostalgic because I had given her one for her car a few months ago and now it was gone.

"What happened to it?" Greg asked.

"I don't know," she said. "I went out to my car from work one day and it was just gone."

"Maybe it went to one of those conventions." Greg said.

Dead silence. And then we all start cracking up. You have to know that Greg doesn't often say spontaneously funny things like that. So it was like a lightning flash. We still talk about it.

Sigh... (giggle)

-- Anonymous, September 22, 1999

5 friends and I rented a cabin on Burnt River, Ontario for a week back in 1982. The engaged couple got 1 bedroom, the other girl got the other bedroom, and we 3 remaining guys sacked out in the living room.

One night, we're all settling into our sleeping bags in the darkness. I'm on one couch, my friend Matthew was on the other and my friend Chris was lying on the floor.

SCENE: A pitch black cabin living room. Three friends preparing to bunk down.

sfx: *clunk*

Me: Gee, my watch fell.

sfx: *Ker-thump!!*

Me: Gee, I fell.

sfx: gut splitting laughter from the entire cabin.

I had forgotten to take my watch off and was placing it on the side table. I missed, and it fell to the floor. Reaching over to pick it up, I lost my balance and fell to the floor in a heap of humanity and sleeping bag.

Of course with everyone laughing so hard, I couldn't help but laugh along. The laughter increased in intensity until we were all holding our sides, unable to breathe, gasping out our belly laughs in silent wheezing.

Okay, so you had to be there...

-- Anonymous, September 22, 1999

I can't think of the funniest thing I've said, not that there haven't been a whole ton of funny things. But I remember the funniest thing Pat said this weekend:

Scene: A small rural road on the way to his parents' house where we pulled over when the truck made a funny noise and then refused to start.

Pat poked around under the hood for a while, then stood there as we though about the possibilites.

Finally he pointed to several flies crawling around on the window and said 'I know this truck is dead. See? It's got flies on it.'

-- Anonymous, September 22, 1999

Scene: Very tired Carol and boyfriend, in bed. Carol tosses and turns, so tired she can't get comfortable.

Carol: (toss) (turn)

BF: (exasperated sigh)

Carol: (thrash) (roll over)

BF: (sighs again)

Carol: (shoves her arm under the pillow in a peculiar wa)

BF: (finally fed up) What are you DOING?

Carol: What do you think I'm doing? I'm leaving this here, for the Arm Fairy.

It may not be the funniest thing I've ever said, but we still giggle about it at times.

-- Anonymous, September 22, 1999

I don't know if this is the /funniest/ thing I've ever said, but it sure is the funniest thing I've ever said to a complete stranger.

I was an 18 year old freshman here at Colorado State, and looking for a place to live over the summer. As tedious as house hunting is, I was very excited, as it was the first time I would be living alone, away from family and away from the dorm. Nervous and excited as I was, I was looking through the campus newspaper for prospects. One ad looked promising, so I called it up. A pretty-sounding girl answered the phone (what 'pretty' sounds like, I don't really know, but I guessed she was pretty), and I had meant to say, "Yes, hello, I was just reading in the paper that you wanted to share your house with a Christian male or female for the summer," or somesuch.

Of course, I was reading through other ads as I was talking to the gal, and my eyes scanned across something like "2 bed, 1 bath.." and my greeting came out thus: "Yes, hello, I was just reading in the paper that you wanted to share your bed with a Christian male or female for the summer."

Of course, being the good Bible-thumping Christian I was then, I was truly mortified. I'm guessing the pretty-sounding girl on the other end was mortified too. Of course, I don't know because we both hung up on each other in a big hurry.

-- Anonymous, September 22, 1999

I think this qualifies as more of a "Freudian slip" than an actual intended funny comment, but what the hell.

So, during my freshman year of high school (1991), my HS brought in a theater troupe that was travelling around, doing a play called "The Wizard of AIDS," in order to promote AIDS awareness. They did things like roll a giant condom over the Wicked Witch of the West in order to kill her, blah blah blah. At any rate, the little phrase that Dorothey said to get home was "There's no sex like safe sex."

This play made quite the impression on our happy Wisconsin town, and so my mom wanted to talk to me all about it when my then-boyfriend and I returned to my house after school that day. I was telling her about the whole condom thing, and what I learned, and blah blah. Then, out of nowhere, when I was telling her Dorothey's phrase, it came out, "There's no sex like *good* sex!"

My mom and my then-boyfriend just sort of stared at me, and no one said anything for a moment, and it took me a minute to figure out what I had even said. :0

Whoops.

-- Anonymous, September 22, 1999

I worked in Washington DC back in 1989 when the Redskins were playing good football, just about everyday a group of about eight of us would go to local cafeteria and have lunch together. Our lunchtime conversations were very random and sometimes a bit risque. One day our conversation veered to the topic of circumcision. A very straight-laced girl in our group put her hands over her ears and starting making that "la-la-la" noise to try to get us to change the topic to something more suitable. When that didn't work right away, she waited for a pause and said very innocently, "Hey, how bout those 'Skins!" Our table erupted!

-- Anonymous, September 22, 1999

I didn't say it, my friend said it. Is that ok? Anyway I was at work sitting next to the other girl at work (coincidence?) and she answered the phone. She could answer customer's questions as best as she could or she would transfer them to her boss, Dick. Anyway I heard her say to the customer "Hold on, Dick knows." She transfered the call and looked at me and said "Did I just call that man a "dick nose"? I still laugh and that was like 10 years ago.

-- Anonymous, September 22, 1999

I can't tell you the funniest thing I've ever said, because the funniest things I say are all very mean and they are said only to my beloved. They always involve either a stranger who has done us wrong (the seller's realtor when we bought our home, that bitch on the freeway who nearly killed us, that sort of thing) or some friend or acquaintance whom we actually like a lot, but who has recently hurt our feelings or annoyed us or made an ass of him or herself.

It's a catharsis thing. He does it for me, too. We frequently send each other into hysterical, mean-spirited laughter, but there is an absolute blood oath that we will never divulge our secret meanness.

In fact, I may have said too much. I might have to kill you all now.

-- Anonymous, September 22, 1999

last winter, i was studying for a final with a group of friends. the topic of conversation turned from chaucer to the star wars trailer, and i proceeded to tell them that i had it saved on my computer, but it was still in zipped format. of course, not thinking, i announced to these people that "it's okay, though - we can go upstairs and unzip it!" my friend chris has not let me live that down.

of course, my friends say dumb things, too. today at lunch, for exmaple: two friends were discussing one's involvement with our summerstock company here at school. ginny was pondering a comment of elisa's, as elisa moved on to tell us about her company-mates. one of these men had a propensity for dropping his pants at inopportune times, and elisa said, "i saw a lot of andrew's butt this summer!"

at this point, ginny stops thinking, turns to elisa, and - oblivious to what we have moved on to talking about - asks her, "so, was it good for you?"

the company, not the butt. but ginny couldn't figure out why we were laughing so hard.

-- Anonymous, September 22, 1999

I was so excited because I didn't think i was going to be able to answer this question.

See? I don't normally say funny things. I can sometimes say semi-humorous things. Slightly amusing stuff that people who are the same brainwave as me get, but FUNNY? I usually don't do.

Then I remember, my one stroke of brilliance. Or it may have been that all involved were drunk at the time.

I was having this party. (ME? Never.) And we were all sitting around playing Drinking Jenga(c). Drinking Jenga is just like regular jenga, only I've gone and written things on the bottom of the Jenga pieces. Things like: "If you're wearing jeans, take 10." Where the number is the amount of seconds you have to drink for. You proceed to play it like regular Jenga, only every time you take a turn you do whatever is on the piece. It gets people fucked up REALLY fast, and the person that knocks the jenga over has to slam their drink.

Well, at one point, a friend of mine (PB *swoon*) was getting up to refill his drink, and I guess his foot was close to knocking over MY drink or something. So ANOTHER friend says: "Don't know over her drink!"

To which, I respond: "Yeah, cuz if you knock over my drink, you have to slam the Jenga."

Okay, in retrospect, it really WASN'T very funny. We were just really drunk. We laughed.

Ha.

-- Anonymous, September 23, 1999

Okay, and however funny it MIGHT have been was decreased by the typo!

It should have been the friend saying: "Don't KNOCK over her drink."

Don't KNOW over her drink? What a maroon. :P

-- Anonymous, September 23, 1999

So several friends and myself were at a funeral service for a coworker of ours. We were sitting in the very back because, well, we hardly knew the guy, to be honest. And several of us didn't care much for him but we thought it was a shame nobody else from work was going so we thought we should go.

Anyway, Ken turns to me and whispers that he's never been to this funeral home before. I thought he said he'd never been to a funeral before. So I pointed to the recessed area with the white sheer curtians in front of it and whispered, "See there? That's where the family sits." He points to a vacant section of pews at the far side and whispered back, "See there? That's where the band sits." I almost fell over trying not to laugh. We had to get up and go outside before we humiliated the entire group with our juvenile behavior.

Kate

-- Anonymous, September 23, 1999

Okay, this is what my mom says is the funniest thing I've ever said. I was 4 and in the car on the way home from kindergarten asked, "Mom, what's a bitch?" My mom patiently explained that it's a female dog, but that grown-ups would sometimes say it to describe a woman that wasn't very nice. My little 4 year old brain grasped onto this and held it for a week, awaiting the appropriate moment. Then, again on the ride home, my mom asked what I thought of my new teacher. With a rueful shake of my head I replied, "What a bitch!"

Personally my greatest achievement when I was four was chugging an Orange Nehi and vomitting in midair while jumping into the pool. I guess that doesn't really count since I didn't say anything. Man, it's sad reaching your comedic peak before puberty.

-- Anonymous, September 24, 1999

This wasn't really my doing, but here goes. My daughter was about 2 and a half at the time and my wife had taken her to the mall to shop. My wife was looking at dresses while my daughter cruised around among the racks. My daughter noticed one of those plastic anti-theft thingies on a dress and asked my wife what it was. My wife explained that the store put those on so that no one could steal the dress. My daughter was satisfied with that information and she and my wife went back to browsing the dress racks. A couple of minutes later, my daughter happened to notice a dress that didn't have the plastic thingie. In a loud, very excited voice, within earshot of several clerks, she announced: "Mommy, look. Here's one you can steal".

-- Anonymous, September 25, 1999

I think it's ok that most of these were inadvertantly funny -- they made me laugh until tears came to my eyes anyway!

I'm sure I've said things over the years that were more witty, or that other people laughed at more, but this incident is one that I was quite smug about because I actually got the other person to set me up with a straight line.

I was in botany class with a lab partner, and we were studying horticultural vocabulary words.

I read the definition for her to guess: "Cells that are all the same type of cell" (my present-day approximation)

"A tissue," she replied.

I suddenly was struck by my evil plan.

"What was that?" I asked her, pretending I didn't quite hear.

"A tissue," she repeated.

"What?" giving it one more.

"A tissue!" she said, slight peeved.

"Gezhunteit!" I exclaimed proudly, then laughed uproariously at my own joke. I knew it wasn't *that* funny, but the whole procedure of getting her to repeat the phrase just tickled me!

Anita of Anita's Book of Days

-- Anonymous, September 28, 1999