Okay, I’ve searched the archives and turned up nothing (but that could be explained by the topic). This is similar to the “I forgot what I was drinking” thread but different enough to deserve its own start (IMHO):
The Scene: I was on the road with Mom and the two dogs, bound for a Red Roof Inn. It was late at night and a bit rainy. We had gotten off the interstate and were driving around a semi-industrial area, searching for the hotel. To my left, as we passed through an intersection, I clearly saw the red neon sign proclaiming RED ROOF INN. So I go to the next place I can turn around, go back and turn the corner. The sign I saw had become a blue neon sign saying SEARS SERVICE CENTER.
After many moments of befuddlement, I picked up my jaw from the floor, proceeded back the way we had come and eventually found the aforesaid inn (too far away to have provided any sign). Now this incident shook my fundamental belief in my observational skills (no small matter for an ornithologist) and perhaps because of it, I take a good second look (craning neck and arching eyebrow).
My question: Has anyone else experienced such a perception shift and what was it?
brachyrhynchos, I don’t have any similar story to share, but I’m curious, was the Interstate exit you took exit 256 on I-65 outside Birmingham? If so, I’ll be happy to walk over there and check out the setup of the place, and see how easy it is to get these two signs mixed up. If not, my bad - sorry to bug you.
A lot of times we see what we want or expect to see. I’ve made similar mistakes when waiting on friends. Its a little embarassing to hug a total stranger you thought was somebody else.
Thanks Achernar, but it was off of I-95 in Connecticut. I’ve mistaken one thing for another, but never so completely as this. At least they were both neon signs with three words, but that’s about it. Really baffled me.
(That’s funny spooje - I’ll remember that the next time I realize I’m waving to a stranger I thought I knew.)
Geez, who would have thought that there were two places in the country where you could find a Red Roof Inn by a Sears Service Center? Maybe they hang out together. Now that you mention it, though, I have managed to look at numbers from time to time, and read them completely wrong. Not a dyslexic sort of transposition or anything, but something like misreading 68816 as 60976. It’s only happened once or twice, but it’s made me feel like such an idiot.
Years ago, my Mom was driving down a local street (small town in central Kansas) during July and saw a large evergreen tree in a backyard that was decorated for Christmas - and snow in the branches! She came home and told the family about it, and the next day we all piled in the car to take a look. When we passed the same house, there was no tree decorated for Christmas and no snow, but to this day she is adamant that she saw lights and snow on that tree!
Now, I gotta say in Mom’s defense that I have heard and seen some pretty strange stuff in my hometown. My neighbor once saved a snowball in his freezer so he could throw it at a teacher on his high school graduation day. One of the funniest sights I have ever seen is an outhouse on the roof of the high school building. And the trail of kerosene down mainstreet that someone fired up one night … Them thar sodbusters kin do some purty danged stoopid things to take thar minds off’n the boredom of livin’ on the flatlands. So I guess it’s possible some family decided to have ‘Christmas in July’ for a family member that had just returned home from overseas or something. Still, we began to watch ol’ Mom a leetle closer 'round the liquor cabinet.
A couple of months ago I was mountain climbing with some friends. We were at almost 20,000 feet without oxygen, and it kind of messes your brain up (and the rest of you too, if you’re not careful/lucky). Anyway, my friend Earl is a geologist, and he picked up a few rocks from the peak and put them in his pack. That night at the camp, he got them out and was looking at them. He still swears they were a different color when he picked them up.
I read about a training excercise where a room full of police cadets were told to carefully observe what happened, as they would be asked about it later. The instructor began a lecture on eyewitness accounts of crimes, and in the middle of the lecture a guy ran across the stage and grabbed the instructors purse as he ran by her.
Now remember, these people were expecting something to happen, so one would think they would all have gotten every detail correct.
However,
No one got every detail correct. Most weren’t even close. They got the type and color of clothing wrong, the hair color wrong, which side of the stage he entered and left by wrong, and etc.
When asked to pick the guy out of a lineup, only 30% got the right person.
The funniest thing was that the guy was married to one of the cadets, and even she described him incorrectly AND did not choose him in the lineup!
It really makes you think about how easy it would be to get convicted of a crime, even if you were innocent.
This is something I find annoying. Eyewitness testimony is the least reliable method of identifying a criminal, but jurors care most about eyewitness testimony. People almost never know what they saw, especially if they are stressed or scared.
In the news lately there has been alot of talk about prisioners being released with new DNA evidence. Now, how many men went to jail because the woman KNEW he was the one who raped her! Really, when someone is beating and raping you are you really trying to memorize the details of their appearance.
Now, I’ve mis-seen lots of stuff while under the influence of ole’ devil rum, but not too long ago, perfectly sober in the middle of the afternoon, I walked my ol’ XY-chromosomed self right into the women’s bathroom.
I walked right out, of course, suitably chagrined but unobserved, and viewed the door sign, which was absolutely correct and adorned with a universal sign of femininity. I swear she didn’t have on that little wedge skirt five seconds earlier.
Now I have a tiny twinge of anxiety every time I walk into a bathroom, until I see the reassuring line of standing urinals.
[pointless slam: Of course, there’s no way to make this mistake when you have to walk around the corner and up the fire stairs because it’s taken my office park two months to renovate a single lousy bathroom.]
Achernar When did you drop in? Glad to see another person from Alabama here. I am just up the road in Huntsville.
Welcome to the SDMB. I know I am 70 some odd posts off.
When my son was hit four people saw the woman come off the busy street speeding into the parking lot and hit him. One person saw her back out of a parking spot and hit him.
Strange.