My high school physics teacher collected barf bags from students who would bring them back from vacation.<p>It was a neat addition to the classroom, and especially fun whenever a former student would stop by with one from an exotic airline.<p>He was well liked :)
Wikipedia has an unsourced allegation that "The UNIX-HATERS Handbook" came with a barf bag in the back cover [1]. The book itself is an amusing glimpse into computing history even if it is rather dated and polemic.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_UNIX-HATERS_Handbook" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_UNIX-HATERS_Handbook</a>
I had a small ( I did not fly much) collection of those as a kid because I thought it was kind of a funny thing to do. Amazing that it's an actual 'thing'...
Great article to come across on a friday afternoon, the first paragraph is a great hook and had me laughing too.<p>Was waiting at a drive through coffee recently with the dog in the front seat. She needed to vomit right as I was about to pull up to the window. Just happened to find a small paper bag from lunch, or something, and was able to get everything cleanly in the bag! A dog snout fits more cleanly into a bag than human I think, but have never needed to use one myself.
<i>The barf bag is such a specific artifact of human advancement. Consider all that had to be accomplished in order for it to exist: the triumph of aviation, the incomprehensible global infrastructure of commercial flight, and finally, the neat trick of inventing something people can throw up in that isn’t too threatening to keep close by.</i>
The guy from Maine reminds me of another Maine native I know of in the business of collecting odd things; there’s a lady who would sing you a song while playing her accordion on Peaks Island as you walked into her museum of umbrella covers.