When in Paris...

...do NOT leave your purse with your money, passport and credit card hanging on a rack in a booth at the flea market. Just a suggestion.

So we're at the flea market (the largest one in Paris---which Chris Davis and I just HAD to visit) and the brilliant blue of a cordoroy blazer catches my eye. What to do but stop and try it on? I take off the little purse that I have slung across my body and hang it on the end of the rack, so I can take my coat off and try this blazer on over the other two or three layers I have on to stave off the Parisian chill. Unsurprisingly, the blazer is a snug fit (because of the many layers, I'm sure). So I sadly, but neatly, hang it back on its hanger and wedge it in among the others of its kind. My friends and I then proceed on to the next booths in search of "bargains".

Oh, say, thirty minutes later, my lips are feeling dry so I reach for the not-so-cheap lip color I treated myself to in preparation for my trip and---lo! and behold---there's no purse slung across my body! With amazing astuteness I quickly surmise that it must have gotten left behind when I tried on the brilliantly blue blazer. Luckily, my directionally-savvy friend, Christy Davis, recognizes the branch of the flea market maze from which we have just emerged as being near the blazer booth. I hot-trot it over to the booth and look around for my purse (not there) and then for the elderly gentleman who seemed to own the thing and had helped me before (also not there). I wait patiently. Eventually his young and perhaps-not-so-trustworthy? helper saunters over, followed by the owner himself.

"I left my purse here," I politely declare. The owner says, "Oh, that was yours? I put it upstairs because I wanted to be sure I knew whose it was." He then proceeds to disappear and reappear with a ladder, prop it up against the attic door above his "booth" and climb up into the crawl space, descending moments later with my precious black purse. "Make sure that everything is there," he helpfully suggests. I rifle around, note that my passport and money seem to be there, thank him and walk away with my hand still in my purse. Which is a good thing, because as I continue to rifle through my stuff (looking for my lipgloss, of course), I realize that my credit card AND my lipgloss are both gone! My heartbeat quickens and I turn on my heel, returning to the booth. Both guys are standing there and I brightly begin, "Actually there is something missing...my credit card is not here!" "Oh, no?," the older guy confusedly asks. "Are you sure it was there before?" The younger guy has (what I would consider to be) a little smirk on his face. My suspicion is aroused. "Oh, I'm positive," I assert. "Hmm...well, I can go back upstairs and see if it is there." Out comes the ladder, up crawls the elderly gentleman. Only this time he doesn't even get his whole body in the crawl space before he turns and triumphantly descends with my VISA protruding from betwixt his thumb and forefinger. My suspicion is wide awake, but I have my stuff back. I thank him and tuck the card safely back into my purse (now securely slung across my body). Whew!

I'm not ashamed to admit that I then told the guy that my lipgloss was also missing---much to my friends' embarrassment and dismay. And, actually, the little old guy said he was not crawling back up the ladder to look for my lipgloss. So I did. It wasn't there. I was sad.

In the end, I returned home without my lipgloss but with a VISA that---for a thirty-minute period of time---was in the possession of flea market booth owners. Normally, I'm a trusting person, but the whole thing was a little shady. So now I have a brand-new credit card number. And a resolution to not try on any more blazers when I'm wearing multiple layers...


Hats on Lorie and Chris D. furnished by Paris's Largest Flea Market