A Market of Fleas

Yesterday as a first-time vendor at Germany's largest outdoor flea market, I left with a jangling money belt and valuable observations of the human species. When it comes to the way we love, delude and despise ourselves and each other, we are as simply programmed but unpredictable as fleas. Here are three stories about the items we sold or tried to sell and the memorable encounters involving them: 

1. Where a pair of shoes can('t) take you

A heavy-set woman with excess curls wedged tightly around her chin spied a pair of children's eco-sneakers at our stand and began to radiate with desire. Knowing her son was unlikely to wear them, she tried everything she could to rationalize buying them anyway: negotiating on the price, comparing the shoes to other shoes, and consulting a friend. While she was putting off the decision by trying on skirts, another mother arrived with her son at the pile of shoes. They gravitated toward the ones in question, whipped them out of the box, slid them on, purchased, and left with the grace and resolve of rising and falling tides. Feeling the envy of the first mother rip through the asphalt, I wondered what kinds of unfulfilled hopes and dreams those shoes represented for her.

2. The depth of our fear

A former subletter of ours happened to be working as a public servant at the time when Christian Wulff, once a German national figurehead, fell from grace. After Wulff's official portraits were discarded at the Ministry of Finance, our temporary roommate seized the opportunity to leave us a one-of-a-kind legacy. Wulff's steel grey eyes and thin smile solicited hearty laughs in our apartment, but he reigned like a cloud of doom over our flea market stand. Few people saw the irony and fewer still asked how we had come upon such a rarity. No one picked up the portrait to assess the designer gun-metal frame, worth more than any item at our stand. A few even stormed off in a demonstrative huff after making eye contact with Wulff. Our human drive to distance ourselves from our enemies appears to be deeper than our material greed. 

3. The whimsy of our devotion

Dozens of times I vehemently refused to sell a small, sterling silver pill box for under 10 €.

What was it about the woman to whom I sold it for 7 €? Was it her gentle inquiry? Was it her single-minded fascination for that one item? Was I merely attracted to her twisting wrists as she fingered the box? Did I feel pity on her, fantasizing that she was the orphan Anne from Green Gables? 

I just found her simpatico.