Unexpected departure

I grew up in a family of collectors. Serious collectors. My dad collected coins to the point where he wasn’t referred to as simply a coin collector, he was a numismatist. My parents also collected art, Indian rugs and artifacts, swizzle sticks, Hummels, German beer steins—a little of everything really. I remember a childhood filled with excursions to wide-open fields where we were to traipse around for hours looking for Indian arrowheads to add to our own collections. We were also encouraged to collect rocks and minerals, stamps, postcards—anything small and inexpensive. Still, I never found anything that I really wanted to collect.

I tried for a while to collect funny-shaped candles, but I didn’t have any money so my collection was stupid and small. As an adult I collected Beanie Babies for a bit, which led everyone in my family to collect them as well. Now that the craze is over we have enough Beanie Babies among us to stock a store. And I’m back to collecting nothing.

I once made the big mistake of telling my mom that I sort of liked cows. For the next decade I received a cow-related item for each and every gift-giving occasion, so happy were my parents that I’d finally found something that I loved, that resonated with me enough to want to surround myself with it. Ultimately, I found the courage to tell them that I was over cows. Now they’re back to worrying about me because I obviously lack joie de vivre.

Thank goodness I recently discovered a group of collectors that is as avid as any I’ve seen, my family included. The usual obstacles to serious collecting—money, storage, variety, availability—are not at issue for this group. The items these people collect are free, easy to store, and ubiquitous as heck. As long as you regularly board an airplane.

I’m talking about barf bags. There are actually thousands of serious barf bag collectors around the globe. One website in particular, Bagophily, the magical world of airsickness bags, is full of great information—including photo galleries of the most beautiful bags, the rarest bags, bags sorted by airline and country, bags with grammatical or spelling errors and, of course, the worst barf bags.

The bag pictured above from Finnaviation is the winner in the Best Design category. It’s such a beaut that baggist Graham Curran has turned the design into a Christmas card, cleverly adding a red nose to the reindeer. For several years, Curran ran a barf bag design contest called Retch for the Sky. Unfortunately, these contests have been discontinued, but you can still check out past entries at Design For Chunks.

As comprehensive as the collection at Bagophily is, there are apparently some holes in it. Major underrepresented portions of the globe are a swathe of Africa and chunks of Central Asia and Central America. If you happen to travel to any of these locations, especially on obscure local airlines, be sure to grab a couple bags for the collection. You will be much loved for it, which says a lot. No one loves like a collector loves.