The call came around noon on Friday. The wife.

One of the community groups she volunteers for was having a flea market fund raiser on Saturday. And found out a member (our eldest son) had made other commitments.

They needed someone at the front door to take entry fees ($1 a person or $3 for a family. Half price if you brought a can to donate to the food bank.). From noon to three o'clock.

Could I help?

So. You know what I did on Saturday.

Turns out there were two of us volunteering to run the gate. My partner was a gal we've known for many years, both through the youth group, and because she's been working at the same business for what seems like forever.

And, of course, she and her family hunt, so they know me from contacts in the fall.

Through the course of the afternoon, though, I found out I didn't really know this woman at all. But now, I can tell you she has two sons (and their names). One is a sophomore in high school, the other a sophomore in University Town. Youngest had his first car accident this winter. I can tell you exactly where, and how.

I now know her eldest son has changed majors, and why. I know her husband has just changed jobs. And why. And why he was so thrilled to get sent to training in Wisconsin. I know she has spent the winter recovering from surgery (but not what procedure... I didn't ask), and goes back to work tomorrow.

Yeah. We weren't that busy.

She likes sugar cookies, buying a bag of homemade ones from the little girls that came around to hawk their wares.

She also bought me some chocolate chip cookies, because I couldn't make up my mind.

She likes Pepsi. Straight. Not Diet, not fruit flavored, not caffeine free. Just Pepsi.

Yes, the time went by quickly. (Thanks, M.J., for the lesson you taught me so many decades ago.)

A few other things I learned...

Most people would rather pay extra money than bother bringing a can of food.

One of the organizers forgot to bring a hand stamp, so there was no way to mark people who had paid, then left and wanted to come back in. So we took their word for it. And nobody abused it.

One man came by and announced he was just checking on his wife at her table, to see when she would be done. I let him in without paying.

But don't you look at anyone else's table!

He didn't.

A man, reeking of cigarette smoke, came in and asked "Can I go in there?"

Well, yeah, if you got the dollar.

He had nothing in any of his pockets. Nothing at all. No money, no wallet, no keys, nothing. Not even cigarettes that I could see. Just penniless and looking for a warm place to spend a couple hours.

If it had been a cold or windy day, I might have thrown in four quarters for him (not that the vendors necessarily would have favored that approach). But it was one of the warmest days all winter, so back out he went.

Two of the three young girls (9 or 10 years old, I guess) hawking trays of baked goods came and took a break on the stairs by our table (the only place to sit). And showed us their "tattoos". Bleeding hearts stabbed with large knives. They said they each had a tattoo of a mermaid holding a "sniper rifle" at home that they'll put on later.

Got the dye tattoos at the bowling alley. On a school trip. Their baked goods were raising funds for said school. Their t-shirts told us which school.

The largely Baptist christian school.

Later, when sales were petering out, they came and offered us a deal. They'd flip a coin and if we won the toss, the bag of goodies was free. They win, and it's 50 cents.

I remember being worried when the parents started organizing this fundamentalist school. Last thing we need are a bunch more ignorant Americans that deride science in favor of dogma. But hey, if kids in this school still manage to learn to gamble, and like pictures of knives stabbing hearts, and pretty female fantasy creatures shooting things, well, maybe there's hope after all.

Jail guards are really touchy about being called "guards". They are "Corrections Officers".

I knew that, of course. And called her "guard" again just to piss her off.

But not too badly, I guess, since she hung around and visited for another ten minutes. Took a pamphlet and bought a couple magnets, too.

A rancher wife came out of the market with her arms loaded with new saddle blankets. And went back in for a second load.

Yeah. They got a lot of horses. But as she explained, she's been looking for new blankets for two years. And today, the price was right.

So she bought 'em all.

And that is how you stay alive in the ranching business.

Supposedly, my partner's duty was to collect fees, I was there to collect cans and count people. But her being a business type person, she counted people, too. As closing time neared, we compared.

I was off. My tally had 313 people. She had 305.

Turns out she (and everyone else) was not counting infants. Basically, you didn't count them unless they walked in. Little people in strollers or arms were not countable.

Well, hey, no one told me. When we count deer, it doesn't matter if it's a fawn or doe, you still count 'em.

The wife had three tables of "wares" she was trying to sell. All the junk we'd acquired over the years when we bought something at an auction, and got stuck with a whole box of junk to go with it.

Problem is, she wants to sell everything for what it is worth, rather than just to get rid of it. She just does not get the concept of a flea market, or garage sale. The idea is to have your prices so ridiculously cheap that the buyer feels like they stole it. Meanwhile you feel like someone paid you money to haul your trash away. Told her, I'd put up a sign offering everything on the tables for twenty bucks, and soon we'd be able to go home. And have all the junk gone.

But noooo.

As it is, she sold enough to empty one and a half boxes. Leaving us with something like eight or nine boxes to return to the storage unit.

Amazing how my volunteering to help at the gate got me volunteered for clean-up and hauling junk back, too.

To top off the afternoon, when the wife tried to lock up our locker, the key sheared off in the lock.

Great.

After much struggling and frustration, and failing to remove the severed portion of the key, I was forced to consent to standing guard at the unlocked locker whilst she went and bought a new lock.

This was not at all what I had planned for my day off.

And naturally, not two minutes after the wife left, I got the broken key piece out of the lock.

Thank goodness for cell phones. I informed the wife we no longer needed a new lock.

No, now she just needed to drive home to the next town for our spare key, and back again. More than doubling my time on guard duty.

Oh, joy.