What Do You See?

I thought she was a nutter, a whack job, a maniac. The car in front of me had one of those frames around its license plate advertising something.  As we idled in 5:00 p.m. traffic heading home I amused myself, almost involuntarily reading everything on the back of the cars stopped in my lane.  I was shocked to see that this Subaru station wagon actually proclaimed “Angry Mob.” Well. Must have children on board, I thought. Then I got closer and saw it actually said, “Angry Mom.” Well, well, well,” I thought now. You must be really mad. Imagine advertising such a fact –I just (I’m not proud of this) yelled a lot when stressed out and occasionally squeezed a small wrist really hard.

I eased up a little closer to the Subaru time bomb to check this women out, then realized the license frame said “Army Mom.”

This is happening a lot. I thought a bag of mulch that had fallen to the side of Route 50 was a dead deer. I was saying a little woodland animal prayer for the deer spirit as I sped by then felt both relieved and stupid when I saw I was praying for shredded hardwood.

What have you seen incorrectly? Write about a time you or a character misunderstood or misread something—saw something that wasn’t there. What happened?

Improve it: Go back or forward in time and relate the first incident to another one in which you saw wrongly.