Sometimes my random brain phenomena are just too weird. I was just looking something up on Google image search and one of the outlier results was the movie poster for The Three Faces of Eve. Which my brain read as The Three Feces of Eve for about 1/2 second.
I don’t want to see that movie. Ever.
Consider yourselves invited to add your own “Wow, did I read THAT wrong!” moments to this thread.
Ah, creative reading. I do more of that every day. No notable ones recently, but the ones my husband always reminds me of are my misreadings of a local McDonald’s marquee where thay always have poor letter spacing. So far they have (to my eyes) featured a Bearded Pork Sandwich and a Big 'N Nasty.
Not what you’re asking for, but I remember one time a show (sort of like Leno’s headlines bit) had a marquee for The Mirror Has Two Faces, but instead of the actual title, it was written as The Mirror Has Too Much Feces. It was presented as a haha someone messed up or doesn’t understand English rather than as haha someone changed it intentionally.
I once saw the marquee for “A Star Is Born” changed to “A Rat Is Born.”
Around here children sometimes drown in ditches so to warn kids of the danger the city put up signs featuring a fairy and the slogan “Ditches are deadly. Stay away!” I frequently misread it as “Bitches are deadly. Stay away!”
I also read a book about Jimmy Page once and was surprised to find mention of his guitar prick. For a second I thought he really must be the most amazing rock god ever, but then I realized I’d misread the word “pick.”
I kinda naturally developed “speed reading” on my own - I never took a course or anything, I just started reading really young and just kept getting faster and faster. Trying to analyze what my subconscious brain is doing - I think I scan words, and if the subconscious “recognizes” (or thinks it does) the word at a glance based on length and a few letters it assumes a word and zooms ahead to the next one (or even next line or next paragraph.)
This isn’t a brag, especially because it backfires sometimes with errors and the required re-read. But I have honestly never been reading the same text at the same time as someone else where they were faster. If it’s on a computer screen, I always give the co-reader the mouse because once they’re ready to scroll down, I have been for a bit.
I get “errors” like you describe in the OP all the time. Usually, the error recognition kicks in a sentence later - “wait, that can’t be right” and I scan back. I still read at a hellacious speed, even with the scan-backs.
If I find a good example in the next few days, I’ll post it. I typically don’t remember them because it’s “read-move on-realize error-back up-read again”
Bumper sticker on the back of an SUV read ‘Unions = Jobs’.
Misread it as ‘Unicorns = Jobs’
I did a double-take the first time I misread Target’s motto as “Expect less, pay more.”
All these years later I still read it that way sometimes.
Walking down the main street in our litttle town my husband could see the sandwich board in front of the diner which had the daily specials. The special: “Parsnips, all varieties” he pondered this for a few moments and wondered 1. why the diner was serving parsnips (definitely not diner food) and 2. how many varieties of parsnips there are because he was only aware of one.
Then he got a little closer and realized that the board said “Paninis, all varieties”.
Ah, that makes so much more sense.
Years ago, in the dairy section of a supermarket, I thought I saw cartons labelled ‘Breast Milk’ and did a double-take. It was “Breakfast Milk” (extra-rich full cream milk from Jersey cows, commonly known as ‘gold top’)
National Lampoon once ran a cartoon of Martin Luther nailing 95 feces to the church door.
On the LED-message board at the bus terminal, when there’s nothing important to convey, it will just say VISUAL PAGING SYSTEM. But the words are aligned on top of one another, like this:
VISUAL
PAGING
SYSTEM
Every time my eyes hit that sign, the word VAGINAL pops into my head.
There’s a thread that keeps popping up on the first page of IMHO asking for opinions on the CPAP machine. I still read that as CRAP machine.
The newspaper article was titled ‘Wild Hamsters Search for Lost Hikers’. Odd, usually Search & Rescue dogs are used.
Then I saw that it was actually:’ Wind Hampers Search for Lost Hikers’
I used to have a compact case of face powder that I was sure had the brand name “Normal Water”, which struck me as a peculiar, if inoffensive, name for a line of make up. (It was actually “Natural Wonder.”)
Real slogan of a trucking company: We Go the Distance.
The way I read it quickly: We Got the Disease.
Real restaurant name: Bamboo Garden.
I read it as Baboon Garden.
A friend was in a position to probably have to meet and make nice with someone she really despises. Someone else mentioned that she’d probably shake hands and “stare daggers from hell” at the despisee.
I read it as “duggars from hell,” and all I could think was, damn, I don’t loathe anyone that much!
It’s hard to stare Duggars from Hell when you only have two eyes. By the time you get through the whole lineup your target has already shrugged, moved on, and forgotten about you…
Yeah, I do this a lot, although the only one that’s stuck was the day I read a state slogan as “Expiration Date”.
“That’s odd,” sez I, and I speed up to get a better look at the strange license plate.
On re-reading, I discover that it said “Constitution State”. Made more sense, but wasn’t as intriguing.
With just a little googling (here left as an exercise for the reader), you can read all about the Large Hardon Collider.
Oh, wait – that wasn’t a mis-reading by your tired blood-shot eyes. It really said that!
Okay, here’s a link. But if you google it yourself, I think you can find others too.