When I was a wee lad of middle school angst years, I enjoyed those  
Choose Your Own Adventure books, mostly because I felt like I had  
control of the pending situation, even if I could never figure out to  
keep from shaking the branch to retrieve Carlos's backpack whilst the  
Abominable Snowman lurked around.

With that said and because it is the week before the Day of Labor,  
which means this blog will be labor intensive, I am trying something  
new here, giving you a taste of a writing exercise that you may or  
may not choose to do, enjoy, or utilize. I will start off a story and  
then pass it along to the comment section. You can continue the story  
in the comments (writing up to 4 sentences or just a single line or  
whatever you want really) but always leaving the last sentence  
partially done, so that someone can come in and pick up where you  
left off... you'll see what I mean. Anyway, this just means that you  
have to look and see what was written by the person who commented  
previously. There is potential for this to be a disaster, or a  
masterpiece, or whatever, but I always liked doing these things in  
writing workshops, and if I like it, doesn't that mean that everyone  
else has to like it as well? Anyways, this is a beta version of  
something like this, so just have fun with it, be as ridiculous as  
you want to be, and--if it's good-- I will copy and paste this into a  
word doc, claim I wrote the whole thing and submit it to the Paris  
Review.

Here we go:

"Casey didn't see her coming. He'd just arrived at the Our House for  
his blind date with Melinda and was running over the check list of  
things he wanted to talk about  (her work, hobbies, whether or not  
she enjoyed scary movies or better yet Scary Movie, and anything that  
would lead back to him talking about bench pressing) when he felt  
someone sneak up behind him and squeeze his sides. He turned around  
and..."

Yeah, so the first person to comment start by finishing this stellar  
sentence and then go on for a few, and leave it hanging for the next  
person... and we'll keep going until we figure out just what got real  
with Casey's blind date adventure.

I'm literally nervous (for Case). Songs of 1996 ensue.

Give me one,
reason

Tracy Chapman