I don’t like to travel. There, I said it. I grew up poor and come from a place that a lot of my peers don’t understand; when you are poor, travel is a luxury and not a necessity, and certainly not something you have to do to become a well-rounded person. It’s in the back of your mind at best as something you may do if you can ever afford to stop working. On top of that, I hate planes, I hate packing, I hate stress, I hate that the excitement and mishegoss of traveling I forget to tell the waiter, “No bell peppers, please.” when ordering a meal at a new restaurant. I love Philadelphia and I love Pennsylvania and love short, regional trips, but I get so anxious outside of my element that I can’t enjoy myself.

So, why did I start collecting something that is found chiefly in souvenir shops and rest stops and airports?

Let me tell you about floaty pens. I guess the best introduction would be to reference the original pen- you know, the one with the naked lady, where her clothes fall off. The technology was pioneered by Eskesen, a Danish company, in the 1950s. The technology has advanced now, so that the pens feature things other than hot chicks– they now have a barrel filled with a viscous oil, which houses a “floater”, which floats past a picturesque background.

I can’t explain my attraction to these pens, but I think it has a lot to do with my lifelong love of having a lot of the same thing in many different colors and also the fact that I became TOTALLY DERANGED when I was unemployed. I don’t know why I want them, because I am not really into “stuff”, I don’t really waste money, and I’m not much of a collector. I don’t even do anything with them other than gaze at them lovingly, arrange them by color, write checks for my bills with them sometimes, and occasionally forget I even have them until they come up in conversation and my desire is whipped back up to fever pitch. I get insanely jealous of collectors who have more pens than I do (not hard, I only have like 70). I get unspeakably disappointed when a pen I wanted is sold out (I don’t want to talk about the fact that an actual tear was shed when I found out that floatabout.com completely sold out of Doctor Who pens two weeks before I even realized I wanted them).

My first pen was purchased at the Franklin Institute when we went to see Body Worlds (gross, btw) last year for no reason other than my intense love of Ben Franklin- the pen features Ben flying a kite into a storm cloud. My second was purchased shortly after from the Art Museum, a black pen with a gargoyle floating past the timpanum of the museum.

I had the pens for months and didn’t think much about it until one day I snapped; I began begging everyone I knew, everyone on the internet, to please pick them up for me, send them to me, etc. I spent like $100 at floaty.com (a now-defunct floaty pen retailer). I went to museums I wasn’t even interested in (no offense, African American Museum) just to scour their gift shops. I’m pretty sure that the trip I made to NYC with mouse was 1/4 fueled by desire to eat at Red Bamboo, 1/4 to see dinosaur bones, 1/4 to see a midnight showing of Stop Making Sense, and 1/4 for floaty pens. That may not sound like a lot but can you think of a trip you made driven even 1/8th by pens?

I can only go so far on my bike and the Chinatown bus, though, and I want floaty pens from everywhere. A lot of the time I feel like this crappy Simpsons joke, where Mrs. Krabappel is telling Principal Skinner that she collects matchbooks from glamorous nightclubs and trails off saying, “It’s amazing — if you just write to them and ask them nicely… ”

So I have to beg, I have to reluctantly visit my friends in Georgia and California, I have to have tedious IM conversations with internet guys from England who I don’t even want to F, I have to post on messageboards, and I have to write thinly veiled posts like this for stupid blogs. But really, send me your floaty pens. If you go somewhere, get me a floaty pen. I swear I’ll pay you back.

Fun Float Pen Facts
- The two most popular styles are Classic and Futura.
- I mostly collect classic pens but will take Futura too.
- Only Republicans seem to have floaty pens– Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Abe Lincoln (technically republican !), etc. Plus, only the Republican National Convention gets floaty pens made, not the DNC. Whose side am I on?
- Floaty pens are neat.
- If you tell me about floaty pens you have that you aren’t willing to give me I will be upset.