The flea market should be like Las Vegas…what goes on there should stay there.

And it’s really not for me to make judgement calls about what anyone does there.

It’s not my place to suppose I understand what anybody’s up to.

I don’t think that the flea market is ground zero for light spirits and benevolence.

There are some dark hearts roaming the grounds….there is evil underfoot at the flea market.

I know that.

Still…it is kind of fun to go there occasionally.

Jenny and I were talking about cloth diapers this morning…and the forums that mothers use to sell them.

Then the conversation got a little deeper into people setting themselves up as dealers…then the conversation veered a little more and I mentioned how much I disliked the scavengers who buy up every bit of low cost baby items at the flea market to sell later at inflated prices…but who say something like:

“I’M BUYING THIS FOR MY GRANDCHILDREN…FOR MY NIECE….FOR MY DWARF LIVE-IN HISPANIC LOVER…”

(That last part isn’t true…it was just something weird that I threw in…)

You’d hear this line…this pile of stuff….these falsehoods coming out of these wrinkled mouths…and then you’d see them selling the same items later in the day at the other side of the market….concrete tables piled high with items that the grandchildren must not have liked.

Nobody tells it like it is….nobody says, “I’m a dealer…unless I rip you off and take advantage of your generous spirit, I can’t make a profit…and profit is what it’s all about. What would it take for you to keep my overhead as low as possible? A story about my fictitious…but SWEET!! LAWD, LAWD! AIN’T THEY SWEET!!!….GRANDCHILDREN?!!”

That’s not true…nobody knows big words like “overhead” at the flea market….nobody uses big words in the underground economy.

I don’t know that I could say that I’m incensed by all the lying.

I don’t care that much.

It’s just strange to see such a pool of the worst of human behavior.

There’s some low-rent activity that goes on at the flea market.

Bunch of freaking lying “grandmothers” roaming around.

We’ve sold stuff at the flea market occasionally.

Given it away, more likely…we sold stuff cheap to get rid of it…gave it away.

The dealers loved us.

When you pull into the market, you see all these flashlight beams coming quickly towards the “new meat” that just pulled into the parking lot.

Before you can get the tarp pulled off the stuff in the truck bed, these full timers are looking in, yelling, “How much?!! How much?!”.

It’s a weird environment.

It’s hard to make your 50.00 a day…I can see why they’d be aggressive…but I really hate the way these full-time dealers act.

Maybe that’s why we don’t go to the flea market very often.

It’s pretty gross.

But…all this talk about the flea market makes me think that it might be fun to go back sometime and check it out.

As a pure sociological experiment, it might be fun to go and “observe” the worst of the human spirit on display for all to see….buying more stuff for the grandchildren who already have it all.

Only a sociological experiment, of course…..

What do I still need that I might find cheap at the flea market, anyway?