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Bonnie Halper is an executive recruiter with an established business in New York City, but it was her passion for mouse pads that got her mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. Bonnie is building a rubber carpet out of her mouse pads, which she began collecting at industry trade shows. She is looking for donors willing to add to her unusual collection. I wrote her to find out more about her mouse pad quilt.
AB: What first made you pick up mouse pads at trade shows (and then keep picking them up)?
Bonnie: I'm a technology recruiter, so I get invited to a lot of trade shows and parties. Well, in the halcyon days of dot com, there were a lot of parties. Sometimes 4-5 a night, and there was always a Goodie Bag when you left, and there was invariably a company mouse pad - and tee shirt - in it. I always wondered how many of those companies would be around for the long haul, and I wanted a way of cataloguing all of the companies. I had to decide which to collect - tee shirts or mouse pads. Well, I’m petite and the tee shirts were all extra larges. Plus, I live in NY, where space is at a premium, and mouse pads take up less space. Mouse pads seemed more apropos to who I am and what I do - and easier to display. The mouse pads won out.
AB: What is your earliest mouse pad?
Bonnie: Hard to say, but my Prodigy mouse pad is definitely up there. I mean, it reads, “Choose a Better Highway.” Who calls it the information superhighway anymore, anyway? With the possible exception of its inventor, Al Gore, that is.
AB: What is your most unusual mouse pad?
Bonnie: Netscape. Remember Netscape, before it became part of AOL? It's 3-D and pretty cool. If you move your head back and forth, you can see the meteor showers, just like on the Netscape browser. I thought they did an awesome job with that one.
AB: Is there a rare mouse pad that you own or wish you owned?
Bonnie: Yes! Waaay back when, a friend showed me this mouse pad that was basically an Ouija board. It was eerie-scary, but I wish I had it now although I recently saw it on ebay. It's mine!
AB: Which mouse pad is your favorite and why?
Bonnie: It would have to be my Mickey Mouse pad. Or is it a Mickey MOUSE pad. It's classic. It's shaped like Mickey's head. It's probably my biggest mouse pad, too. I got it back in '95, from an invitation-only presentation I attended.
AB: Have you ever purchased a mouse pad on an online auction site?
Bonnie: No mouse pads should be naturally occurring. Plus there aren't many interesting mouse pads on eBay. Yet. I will make an exception with that Ouija board mouse pad.
AB: When did you realize you had a collection?
Bonnie: When I was cleaning out my home office one day a few years back, as I needed to make more room for books. I noticed all these mouse pads had collected into quite a pile. I knew if I ditched them, I'd have more than enough room for the books - but I couldn't do it. Instead, I stopped reading.
AB: Have you met any other collectors of mouse-pads or trade show collectibles?
Bonnie: Actually, I've never met another mouse pad collector. In fact, when I go to tradeshows and stop off at booths where the company is giving away mouse pads - then ask for one to add to my collection - I get very strange looks from the booth people. So I tell them I'm actually making my own wetsuit. I mean, neoprene is neoprene, right? For some reason, that sounds more acceptable. Go figure! Haven't met any other true collectors of trade show tchotckes, either. I've met people who grab handfuls of candy or pens or pocket knives at a booth, but how many pocketknives with company logos does a girl really need. Now, MOUSE pads, on the other hand...
AB: Do you collect other items?
Bonnie: Define collect. I own quite a few pairs of shoes, which my Significant Other refers to as my shoe collection, but guys own one or two pair and call it a day. So, I wouldn't call the 75 or so pairs I own a collection, but I think the picture of Imelda Marcos I have hanging on the wall above them may somehow contribute to his confusion.
AB: What do your friends/family think of your unusual collection?
Bonnie: Funny, neither friends nor family directly commented on my collection - which they didn't know about or maybe just chose not to acknowledge, until the piece appeared in the Wall Street Journal. I have subsequently heard phrases like get a life, and are you just completely non compos mentis.
AB: Why are you making a quilt rug with them, and in what room will it be housed?
Bonnie: Well, we just moved into a new office, and I'd been searching all over for a carpet for the floor of my office. Now, it had always been my intention to hang the mouse pads on the wall, but as I was laying them out on the floor, planning their placement, I noticed how awesome they looked as a rug, then thought, maybe that's why I hadn't been able to settle on a rug for the office. I was just waiting for the inspiration to strike! So - it'll be on the floor of my office.
AB: Tell us about the search for mouse pad donors.
Bonnie: It was this search that led me to believe I may well be the only true mouse pad collector on the planet, and if you're a LEXX fan, in either of the two known universes. As I started constructing the rug, I found I was several mouse pads short of a wall-to-wall, so I started emailing and asking friends to contribute excess mouse pads they might, too, have acquired over the years, to it. Now, most of my friends are in the tech industry, and many of them went to as many tradeshows and parties over the years as had I, yet, strangely enough, they hadn't saved any of the mouse pads they'd been given. So I expanded the search to include a few tech reporters I know, figuring they HAD to be recipients of mouse pads from various companies. And while my instincts were correct, it seems they hadn't saved them for whatever reason, either. But the Wall Street Journal reporter was intrigued by the idea of my mouse pad quilt and thus the story appeared. Now, while people have been indeed donating mouse pads because of the story, they usually have one or two. So far, another collector has not surfaced. I've even checked eBay. Yes, there are mouse pads, but it's not what I would call a collectors category.
AB: Finally, are there any resources out there for mouse pad collectors, and will you be writing a book?
Bonnie: No resources I've discovered. Let's face it - the field is probably too new. I mean, a friend of mine is sending me a Mozilla mouse pad - and how many people remember Mozilla, which is still around, by the way. I never thought of writing a book, till you posed the question. Actually, my mouse pads would make a great coffee table book, even if it is a bit geeky. But when you look at the mouse pads, they really are like little neoprene works of art. Not to mention the fact that - thanks to lunatics like me - many of them have outlived the companies that inspired them.
NOTE: Here's a picture of some of Bonnie's mouse pads:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y202/m02/abu0064/images/mousepads.jpg
If you have any mouse pads you'd like to contribute to Bonnie's quilt, please feel free to email her directly at bonnie@sendresume.com. And please tell her you saw the article in AuctionBytes (not to be confused with Wall Street Journal).
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