photo credit: Toni_V

Have some fun, add your own OTTBO’s – send me a comment or two!

Years ago, while playing tourists in downtown Toronto my husband and I jaywalked mid-block. As we stepped off the curb, to our surprise and embarrassment, ALL traffic, on both sides of the road STOPPED!  It took us a couple times to get it – in Canada, you don’t hit the pedestrians! It’s the law and people take it very seriously.  And so it became our secret code, whenever the other of us was oblivious to the blindingly obvious, (OTTBO for short) we’d smirk and say, “Don’t hit the pedestrians.”

Me, Being OTTBO…

• I continued to exceed the speed limit after seeing the second motorcycle officer going the other way…
• I asked, upon smelling burned popcorn, “Did somebody burn the popcorn?”
• I let the phone go to voicemail, and when it immediately rang again, I let it go to voicemail and when it immediately rang again…
• I failed to respond with “Happy Birthday” after my friend announced, “It’s my birthday!”

I could go on and on, but it would be more fun to hear from you about your OTTBO’s than to meander through more of my own boringly bungled blunders… so send me some comments!

I Coulda Hadda a V-8

The trouble with being OTTBO is that there really is no going back.  Yeah, I messed up.  Sometimes it was a big-time mess, sometimes not so big.  Still, beating myself up with “coulda, woulda, shoulda” is futile and depressing.  Instead, tongue in cheek, I’m learning to simply smirk, “Hey Ellie, don’t hit the pedestrians.”  And then ask myself the optimistic feed-forward question, “What could I do differently next time?”

Have some fun, add your own OTTBO’s – send me a comment or two!