For some reason I always read hospice as ho-spice, like something to spice up a ho.
My first week at a new location with my employer, I walk by a room with a sign next to the door: “Relaxation Room.”
I peek in, and there’s a nice recliner, soft lighting, mood music. I’m thinking this is great (my company is generally really nice with people perks), but my old office didn’t have such a thing. Being lunch hour, I let myself in, close the door, and doze off for about 20 mins.
Feeling refreshed, I open the door to leave and notice the nice young lady waiting outside with her breast pump wasn’t looking too enthused. The sign actually read “Lactation Room.”
:rolleyes:
Just got a new one.
Scanning down the thread titles in Cafe Society, I see Puberty of the Penis.
For years I thought painstaking broke up as pain staking, and I wondered what people were staking their pain on.
Me too. I came across it in books long before I ever heard it spoken, and it was clearly the past participle of “misle” (I was a kid and too lazy to look it up in the dictionary - it was easier to figure it out from context). :rolleyes: Same error with infrared - didn’t figure it out until I saw it spelled as infra-red.
I was re-reading Stephen Jay Gould’s I Have Landed yesterday, and glanced at the book spine and saw the title as I Could Have Landed.
There’s a store near where I work called Cliff’s Hair Place that I consistently see as Cliff’s Hate Place.
The ads for “goarmy” drove me crazy until I realized it was “go army”. 
Of course, why anyone would want to spray a fine mist on anyone, is still a mystery to me.
Occasionally when I want to switch forums on this site, I’ll scroll down to where it says Forrest Gump.
A few years ago, I was lying in a hospital bed in the intensive care unit, drugged, plugged, and bored out of my gourd. The only thing that kept my mind alive was listening to the television. I perked up when I thought I heard a TV news announcer say “Next up, the future of ileostomy.” Since I had undergone ileostomy surgery, I was very eager to hear this story. It turned out to be “The future of Ilie Nastase.”
One of my sisters, Autumn, had flown home for a family reunion hosted by my aunt and uncle, who kindly met her at the airport with my youngest sister, Judy. On the way to the camp site where they were staging the reunion, they were in a terrible car accident; an old man in a pick-up rammed them in the left rear door, right where Autumn was sitting.
Everyone was ok, but they were all taken to the hospital. After being discharged from the emergency room, Autumn and Judy were riding with our cousin Bill and his wife. Bill says over his shoulder to Autumn, “Do you egg crate now?”
Autumn: “???” She looks over at Judy, who shrugs; she has no idea what he means either.
Autumn: “Um, excuse me?”
Bill: “Do you egg crate now?”
Autumn: “…”
Bill: “Do you egg crate now? Do you hurt, are you in pain?”
Autumn: “OH! Do I ache right now! No, I’m fine.”
I do this all the time, too, but I can’t remember most of them. One that I can think of is a street in our neighborhood called Star Fire. I always read it as “Stir Fry.”
Background: Long ago, my baby sister was 6 years old and in first grade, and had just gone on her first field trip. Of course, she needed a permission slip signed by a parent.
At dinner not much later, we were having spaghetti and on the table sat the familiar green can of Kraft Grated Parmesan Cheese.
Baby sister read the label and asked:
“What’s Granted Permission Cheese?”
And so it is called to this day.
This doesn’t exactly fit the topic since I correctly read someone else’s typo, but it’s funny nonetheless. At the auto glass company where I work, my job is mostly purchasing parts that aren’t in stock, whether aftermarket or from local dealers. We have some of the most goddamn illiterate people in the world writing up our work orders, sometimes I just groan and fix them and sometimes I laugh out loud and leave them because they amuse me. Today I saw one from some incredibly talented person who’s found a unique way to save me some work. Now, on my keyboard at least, the ‘P’ and ‘N’ are nowhere near each other…
“Peed dealer molding and retainer. Call customer.”
Once early during the Clinton presidency Me and a couple friends were talking about Al Gore and his chances at presidency. One guy who wasn’t contributing much jump in and said ".“Nah, Gore’s just another dank whale.” Several people gave assent and others disagreed, while I was busy trying to figure out this new bit of slang, and what the hell it meant. It clearly sounded negative, but I just couldn’t understand the reference.
Finally a couple days later I gave up and finally asked the guy what the hell ‘dank whale’ means. Turns out it was Dan Quayle.
I read this just now as “dark whale”–you know, like a dark horse, but much larger, aquatic, and with a blowhole. 
While driving home after a long day at the in-laws, we passed a road leading to the “Deer Hatchery” What! I say to hubby. They HATCH deer?!
He almost drove off the road laughing. (yes, at me, not with me) it was the “Deer Mountain Fish Hatchery.” How in the world I just missed Mountain and Fish I’ll never know. But now all fish hatcheries are deer hatcheries.
Years ago when Viacom was the local cable provider their logo didn’t cross the capital “A” so it looked like an upside down “V” They would flash the logo, then voice-over “VIACOM.” The voice-over always startled me because I always read VIVACOM. :smack:
:smack: Me, too.
I sometimes read signs out loud for no particular reason. When I was a kid, my mother, brother and I were walking through the airport parking garage, and I read out loud a sign announcing, “Emergency Stairs.”
“Emergency stairs?” said Mom.
“Yeah, over there,” I pointed.
“Oh, I thought you meant,” and Mom glared at me as hard as she could, “Emergency Stares.”
For a while after that, a cry of “Emergency Stares!” would cause my brother, mom and I to stare at each intently for a few seconds.
I once worked in a government office. The office manager was very fond of placing hand-lettered signs all over the place. Unfortunately, he was a terrible speller.
One day a new sign lettered in the manager’s wobbly hand-printing appeared in the hall that led to the fire door. The sign said ELMERGANCY EXIT. I began referring to the hallway as the Elmer Gantry exit. The term caught on, and the manager never seemed to get it, since I don’t think he’d ever heard of Elmer Gantry.
Wandering around the dairy section of a supermarket, not fully awake, I saw a row of tetra cartons labelled ‘Breast Milk’. On double-take, it turned out to say “Breakfast Milk” (which is an extra-creamy, high-fat version that used to be called ‘gold top’)