Dusty Story Ideas

I have been doing some cleaning of late -- you know, when I haven't been busy searching for a job and sending out resumes and losing my hair over the whole kerfuffle -- and whenever I clean, I find all sorts of old story ideas. I'm sure many writers have the same sort of experience from their house cleaning.

They usually show up in the margins of pages of legal pads, and those have been piling up around here over the last couple years. But I also find plenty of (literally [literally literally]) scraps of paper with little ideas written on them.

Sometimes, they will be neatly separated from whatever meeting notes, stories, or doodles occupy most of the page. Occasionally, they'll even be labeled "Story Idea." Other times they're just a few words that might spark an idea -- or might serve as a good writing prompt. Like this:

Book characters meeting the actors who will play them onscreen

Can you just imagine what Captain Ahab would have to say to Gregory Peck or Patrick Stewart? Or Romeo Montague to Leonardo DiCaprio? Or Frodo to Elijah Wood?

Sometimes, though, there's more text but less explanation. This one especially caught my eye because it looks almost finished. Also because it was so obviously derived from Monty Python.

  "Hey boy! What are you doing there?"
  "Girl."
  "Sorry, but from the back..."
  Olivia vomited over the rail again. Watched her dinner fall some 200 feet to splash into the dark waves below.

I think this was supposed to be the beginning of a modern retelling of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

You ever find an old, dusty story idea from days past and turn it into something wonderful?