In connection with a New York museum’s exhibition called “The Keeper,” The New York times asked its readers to submit stories and photos of the things they collect. Vacuum cleaner bag gunk was just one — but not necessarily the oddest — example of the things we collect. The response came from savers of everything from apple stems to chopstick wrappers to avocado seeds to museum toilet paper from Europe.
The paper didn’t hear from the guy in Australia who collects belly button lint, but they did get replies from a man in California who collects photos of men posing in rows. A woman in Phoenix who picks up the rubber treads from the bottoms of people’s shoes she finds on hiking trails. A woman in New York who collects doll heads. Not to be confused with the woman in San Francisco who gathers dolls’ eyeballs.
I have no idea what compels people to collect vacuum cleaner bag contents or European toilet paper. According to one online psychologist, “Because life is uncertain and can easily make a person feel helpless some people use their collections to create a private comfort zone that they can control.” I have even less idea what that means.
Maybe that’s because I’m not much of a collector. The nearest I have to a collection is dozens of restaurant menus in frames that hang on a wall in our kitchen.
There’s a 1970s menu from the world famous, Michelin-starred Maxim’s of Paris, where my wife and I managed not to faint dead away when the bill arrived and we discovered we owed a budget-boggling $50 for our dinner for two. A menu from a restaurant to which took my daughter for lunch when she was 16; the restaurant was Windows on the World, which graced the top of the North tower of the World Trade Center until Sept. 11, 2001. Menus from Mamma Leone’s and The “21” Club in Manhattan. The Bubble Room in Florida. Commander’s Palace in New Orleans. The Pine Club in Dayton, Ohio.
My menu collection may not be all that unique. But it probably looks better hanging on our kitchen wall than the stuff in our vacuum cleaner bag.
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