I’ll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours

Over the past week I have been opening neglected folders on the computer, one of which bears the label Starts & Stops. The Date Modified column of the document files contained therein reveal that these gems come from that ancient epoch known as 2005 (though a few date to 2006 or 2007).

For example, the first document is titled A Frog and a Horse. I open it. What does the text say? "A Frog and a Horse." That’s it. I typed "A Frog and a Horse" into a word processor file, saved it, and have been toting it around since 12-16-06 10:38 AM.

Here is another excerpt, the opening lines of something titled Dirt Stew (05-10-07 12:49 PM):

Dad started the fight. He said Connie’s stew tasted like dirt.

Dad was Ed’s brother, and Connie was Ed’s wife. Ed glared across the table over the pot of stew at dad. ‘What?’ dad said. ‘I had better stew in the service.’

Connie had made the stew earlier that day, as soon as she found out that dad was coming over to talk. It wasn’t a holiday, merely june 12th, but it was the first time
in at least twenty years that dad and Ed willingly sat at the same table.

It has...potential? And here extracts from some kind of list I engineered and saved and never looked at again (02-06-06 8:20 AM):

1. Do not pay any attention to grocery store tabloids. Celebrities are not generally interesting people.
2. Swimming pools are not toilets.
3. Think with your own brain, not with someone else’s brain.
4. Surrender is an option, if you wish to.
5. Do you ask questions?
6. Go ahead and try it, you might like it.
7. I am beginning to hear phrases such as "non-democratic totalitarian state" in mainstream media outlets.

Your guess is as good as mine. Nowadays any list I deem worth saving will almost assuredly be composed of nouns and verbs, broken bits of overheard conversations, impossible hypothetical arguments, unusual names; little of it will make sense.