I don't know why I'm posting this...
As it's utterly monstrous and you'll all hate me forever and I'll have to change username and build up a whole new identity - again.

Still, fuck it:

A mate and I were sitting in the back of a coach somewhere between Ankara and Cappadocia. The road was straight and the typical speed- demon of a Turkish driver was seizing the opportunity to floor it when we reached a small, unattractive town that had somehow developed along this stretch of dusty highway.

Driver maintains his speed; suddenly a wet, meaty THUD! The coach swerves back and forth and comes, eventually, to a screeching halt. My friend and I peer out of the back window and in the distance, but just close enough to discern, was the very dead body of a child, aged around ten, and the crumpled remains of his bike.

Being the only foreigners on board, my pal and I just decided to stay put. Some people got off the coach. Some locals began to remonstrate noisily with the driver; Hysterical man, clearly a relative, probably Dad, was being held back from physically assaulting the driver...

And me? I literally had to bite the back of my hand until it bled to stop the laughter. I sort of slumped forward so that I was invisible to the people still on the coach, my body shaking with mirth. And the more I knew that I would probably be kicked to death if anyone on the bus sussed me, the funnier it became.

I try not to think about it these days because it still reduces me to fits of giggles. Hull's too good for me.
(Happybara The jungle came alive and took him, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 14:56, 41 replies)

I'm confused.
Why would the death of a child be so funny. Was it the shock?
( girlinthehole, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 15:12, closed)

I honestly don't know.
I'd like to think it was the shock...
(Happybara The jungle came alive and took him, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 15:27, closed)

My wife reacts the same
When she beats children she can't stop laughing....

no wait a min, when she's shocked she starts nervously laughing. Genuinely, her twin got run over in front of her and she was stunned to the spot laughing and crying at the same time.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 15:43, closed)

Hmm...
...sociopath much?
(emadex thinks the world will end on, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 15:14, closed)

Click for having the balls to out yourself as the devil

(NuffMuff fucks shrubbery, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 15:25, closed)

What the fuck is wrong with you?

( rofl harris, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 15:32, closed)

Hysterical laughter is a fairly common way of dealing with shock.
[edit]- Though that doesn't account for laughing at the memory. *frowns quizzically*
( Tab Hunter Make this useless process end and so, begin again, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 15:40, closed)

no it doesn't
Not at all.
( rofl harris, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 15:45, closed)

*agrees with your original point*

( Tab Hunter Make this useless process end and so, begin again, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 18:27, closed)

That's a bit...

.....

....well, something.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 15:39, closed)

at least it was a bike, not a wheelchair...
(nimrodihnio making gravy for one., Mon 26 Jul 2010, 21:37, closed)

no, that could get quite acrimonious ;)
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 22:08, closed)

Pretty awful to be honest. I hope for your sake it was the shock, although that doesn't really explain your reaction to it now...
(BinDipper, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 15:40, closed)

It sounds
like it was shock. A common enough reaction, and it doesn't make you a bad person. Giggling about it now though? That's weird.
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 16:03, closed)

Damn.
I KNEW posting this was a bad idea. Really - I'm a totally empathic person with a kid and everything, and one day I might return him to his real parents... I jest, I jest.

In all seriousness, I think the initial laughter was caused by the shock and the sheer surrealism of the situation. Sitting on that bus laughing at something so very wrong and knowing that I might get myself killed. The emotional response was complex.

The subsequent (and rare) giggling is just me re-living the experience mentally and automatically experiencing a diluted repeat of my initial reaction. Honest.
(Happybara The jungle came alive and took him, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 16:18, closed)

I can see why this would happen
Laughing and swearing originate in the same part of the brain. Fear plays a big role as well. The shock might make you giggle and then the horror at yourself and the very real fear you'd be killed would continue the nervous reaction/giggling. This would be especially exacerbated by the helpless feeling of not being able to do anything to ameliorate what was going on.

happybara, I'm pretty sure you didn't think it was funny; your giggling is a nervous reaction just like jumping when hit with a reflex hammer.
(TDub Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides on, Tue 27 Jul 2010, 0:28, closed)

Ted
Bundy?
(viciousal, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 16:06, closed)

Al Bundy and canned laughter morelike

( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 16:18, closed)

I find the stories were a fat bloke falls of a chair
more entertaining that this
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Mon 26 Jul 2010, 16:24, closed)

I wouldn't worry about it
no weirder than the ghouls who instantly start filming/taking pics when this sort of thing happens.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 16:58, closed)

Thanks, CD.
And it's not like I'm the one that ran him over in the first place...
(Happybara The jungle came alive and took him, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 17:01, closed)

I sort of understand
I haven't been in a situation quite like this before, but my reaction to being in very serious trouble has always been to start sniggering and laughing. This got me in a lot of trouble at school. I never did anything seriously bad, but if I got a bollocking, I just couldn't help laughing. This invariably made the situation worse and lead to me being in even more trouble. I nearly got expelled after this laughter thing escalated a minor 'not handing in homework' situation, to being in very serious trouble for laughing at every single person who tried to give me a bollocking, right up to the headmaster.

I still get it at work. I was working on a system at work, and day 3 of our implementation was an absolute disaster, and things started to go seriously wrong. Not with the system, but the users just seemed to lose the plot half way through day and reduced their productivity down to 1 widget an hour per person rather than the usual 30-60 an hour. Once the crisis was over and I got dragged into the big bosses office for a debrief, I collapsed in the chair and just started laughing!! I explained it was through relief, and he was a good guy and understood this, but it was still a seriously inappropriate reaction to the situation!
( more balanced than jeremy beadle It wasn't me..., Mon 26 Jul 2010, 17:14, closed)

The second one
I do laugh when things go wrong. It's that sort of dry grim humour in a situation where it's not like someone has died, just a computer system is down and causing minor inconvenience and everyone else is acting like the world is on fire. I can work more efficiently by laughing at it and getting on with fixing it than being all grim and serious and putting all that energy into tutting frowning and apologising.

Don't know about the tragic death of a child though, I think that'd haunt me forever if I'd heard and seen it etc. Still, not one to judge.... I assume (hope) it's just this particular person's brain's way of dealing with the feelings buried further down. It's preferable to the whole psychopath thing.
(Cloudane, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 20:36, closed)

It may be that
The reason that you still laugh at it, even though you realise how ‘wrong ‘ it is on a conscious level, is because the memory of witnessing the tragic and brutal death of a child is a traumatic one and way outside your normal experience or expectation, we associate all the heightened emotions we had at the time with memory, so when we remember it or reminded of it the same feelings return in the present automatically. Like when we hear a song from childhood and
brings back pleasant associations and which makes us smile or feel sad.
You are still a cunt for laughing in the first place...
(nimrodihnio making gravy for one., Mon 26 Jul 2010, 21:47, closed)

Shock or not...
...you are an unadulterated shit.

I hope you die in pain.
(Colonel Blink is now officially a pretentious prick, Mon 26 Jul 2010, 22:10, closed)

Hmmm.
Your signature is oddly appropriate.
( jim_bob can herd cats., Tue 27 Jul 2010, 9:33, closed)

Reminds of that post yonkers ago
Where somebody was advocating rape as a good punishment for approving of rape.
( rofl harris, Tue 27 Jul 2010, 10:21, closed)

Fuck it....
....yes it's a monstrous reaction to a horrendous situation. However, it sounds like you don't think that it's actually funny, but you had this reaction to it.

Fair play for being honest about it. It's easy for folk to slag you off, but we all react differently to shit like that.

Actually finding it funny would make you a cunt.
(NoveltyCondomHead Clanks Wams., Mon 26 Jul 2010, 22:15, closed)

I get it
I resuscitated someone on a plane. After we landed and the ambo had toddled off with him, one of the filght attendants said something mildly stress relieving. I burst into brays of addled laughter, howling like a howler monkey bwa ha ha, etc. Everyone on the plane, including his widow heard my wildly inappropriate laughter and glared at me. It was the letdown after the shock and having adrenalin flowing for an dhour.
(TDub Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides on, Tue 27 Jul 2010, 0:32, closed)

I saw my friend get run over once.
The entire group of us burst out laughing. Because it was funny. That was of course when we realised he was okay. It was just hilarious how it happened.
( Major Turd for tonight only, Tue 27 Jul 2010, 0:46, closed)

I blame the media
our expectations of how people should react to trauma are so shaped by movies/tv etc that anything that falls outside that is seen as wrong.

Truth is that reactions to trauma are complex, and reactions like this (and even more bizarre) are far more common than we would realise.

It is easy to judge when you think you know.
( Sextant goes to him is emotionally erect, on this day, Tue 27 Jul 2010, 1:22, closed)

I'm not sure what's worse here.
Laughing at dead children, or all the Internet Psychoanalysis trying to justify it.
( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Tue 27 Jul 2010, 7:44, closed)

Mmmm
Your inability to decide if laughing at the violent death of child is worse than some posts on a message board would indicate crippling undiagnosed Asperger’s.
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Tue 27 Jul 2010, 13:20, closed)

Well played here

(Reverend Fister "a disciplined fuckwit", Tue 27 Jul 2010, 14:27, closed)

It's a close one, while, it's only one prick laughing at dead children..
..there's hundreds of wankers climbing aboard the grief train with their hand furiously pumping the cocks of Internet Diagnosis.
( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Tue 27 Jul 2010, 15:22, closed)

Man takes QOTW way too seriously

( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Tue 27 Jul 2010, 17:50, closed)

top marks for inappropiateness
You sound like you knew it was wrong to laugh. Must have been nervous laughter at the time, reinforcing itself through fear of wrath. Your giggling at it now should then be relief at escaping 'death by being a twat'.
Have a click
(Singularity was tiny but amazingly dense on, Tue 27 Jul 2010, 11:26, closed)

^this
*clicks*
( Tourette's ( . )( . ) has a monkey hair in her fried egg, Tue 27 Jul 2010, 13:05, closed)

laughter is the best medicine
i laughed in the face of a robber when I had a gun pointed me at me during an armed robbery. It made me look Honda hard and no one knew that I went home, cried and drank a h u g e amount.
( spingers, Tue 27 Jul 2010, 17:52, closed)

Forget this 'hull' stuff,
take a second to actually consider what a genuinely shit person you are.
( Zuowan, Wed 28 Jul 2010, 14:28, closed)

Nah.
I'm through with introspection. And may I also suggest that there is truly no such thing as a shit person. Nobody ever does anything wrong according to their model of the world. Buddha was laughing with me.
(Happybara The jungle came alive and took him, Wed 28 Jul 2010, 17:39, closed)