Meme Slacker: Goin' Off on the 161...

My new cousin Miriam recently tagged me with the 161 Meme at her blog Ancestories. What a pity she didn't tag me instead for the other one she posted that day, Can You Top This?, for which you post about your most prolific ancestor. My response to that one would have been so easy: "Nope! Can't top that!" because Miriam posted about her most prolific ancestor, Elder John Strong, who also happens to be my 10th great-grandfather (my great-grandmother Kate Pettis Kerr is descended from his son Jedediah and Freedom Woodward).

Miriam didn't even know we're cousins until, well, right now. So I guess she can be forgiven for not knowing that I'm not much of a reader. Plus, I was in Michigan visiting my dad at the time. But hey, I can't sit here forever with this meme hanging over my head, and since I was mildly stimulated--I admit it--by the discussion about mystery novels with a genealogical twist a couple months ago at West in New England, off I went to the library for an armload of books. I'm gonna play your little meme game, Miriam, but in exchange, I leave it to you to determine exactly what our relationship is. Heh. Good luck with that!

So, okay, I picked up A Comedy of Heirs by Rett MacPherson, and the sixth sentence on page 161 was:

My children and I were enjoying a pepperoni and mushroom pizza, thin crust with extra cheese and a big pitcher of soda.

Hmm, as sentences go, there's really nothing genealogical about that, I thought, so maybe another book would provide a more thematically-appropriate sentence.

I turned to page 161 in the next book on the stack, A Misty Mourning, also by Rett MacPherson, and what to my wondering eyes should appear? This:

We were quiet a moment while we ate our pizza.

I'm not always a quick study, but I sensed a theme developing here, and it was decidedly not genealogical! A little more research was in order, I thought, so I sat down with A Misty Mourning, a tall coffee, and some simple note-taking supplies. I enjoyed a good read, and my notes appear below:

Each numbered entry in this list represents a single page. Numbered entries are listed in chronological order, but list numbers do not correspond with page numbers due to the fact that not all pages had specific food references.

Specific Food References in A Misty Mourning

1. coffee
2. bottle of wine
3. bread, pinto beans, pinto beans
4. Hershey's candy bar
5. taffy
6. navy beans, two desserts
7. orange juice
8. coffee, chocolate, sugar, soda
9. Apple Cinnamon Cheerios, alcohol, spirits, booze
10. alcohol, six-pack of beer, fifth of whiskey, gin, bottle of wine, potato salad
11. potato salad, baked beans, potato salad, sliced tomatoes
12. pork steaks, deviled eggs
13. potato salad, chocolate ice cream cones
14. pork steak
15. cookies, crackers, iced tea, lemonade
16. muffin, blueberry muffin
17. coffee
18. turkey sandwich, sliced tomatoes, cottage cheese, Dr. Pepper, Dr. Pepper, cottage cheese, tomatoes, turkey sandwich
19. cottage cheese, sandwich, soda
20. Dr. Pepper
21. bread, chocolate
22. fried chicken, mashed potatoes, beets, peas, homemade biscuits
23. fried chicken, chicken leg
24. chicken leg, chicken leg
25. chicken leg, grease
26. chicken leg, chicken leg
27. spirits
28. biscuits & gravy, juice, dough, orange juice, dough
29. oatmeal, coffee, biscuits, juice
30. biscuits, coffee
31. homemade biscuit, excruciatingly delectable strawberry jam, biscuit, milk
32. biscuit, shellfish
33. low-fat, low-sugar, low-caffeine, low-calorie, or low-carbohydrate foods
34. iced tea
35. whiskey
36. beer
37. 7Up, 7Up, Dr. Pepper, 7Up, soda, soda
38. pie
39. soda
40. oatmeal-raisin cookies, milk
41. cookie, milk
42. cookie crumbs
43. spicy cheesy pizza, pizza, nice gooey piece of pizza, bottle of Rolling Rock, pizza, round red layers of pepperoni, piece of pizza, pizza, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, onions, pepperoni, pizza
44. pizza
45. pizza
46. Rolling Rock
47. beer
48. tomatoes
49. beer
50. beer
51. beer
52. chocolate bar
53. bologna & cheese sandwich
54. milk
55. Dr. Pepper
56. Dr. Pepper
57. roasted chicken, vegetables, minced-meat pie
58. cookies
59. oatmeal-raisin cookie

Specific Restaurants Mentioned One or More Times

• McDonald's
• Burger King
• Denny's

Food Words Used as Descriptors, Idioms, or Lyrics

• pizza parlor
• empty pizza box
• Samuel Adams beer T-shirt
• cake plate
• tomato plants
  
• grocery store
• cream-colored marble
• strawberry red hair
• smart cookie
• spill the beans
• crying-in-your-beer music
• Ninety-Nine Bottle of Beer on the Wall

A Non-Comprehensive List of General References to Food

• breakfast
• pail lunches
• lunchtime
• dinner
• food was served
  
• stomach rumbled
  
• three fast-food stops
• ate their food
• snatching at her food
• eating as fast as I could

And last but certainly not least,

• "All I could think about was food."
  

Yeah . . . [sigh] . . . me too . . .