Please bear with me if I start drifting off into nonsensities. I’ve been through a traumatic ordeal. My nerves are jagged and my thoughts fleeting.

Spring is here and I’ve just endured the horrors of a giant flea market. This may not have much to do with street talk, but I’m stressed and I need to rave.

Plus, there are lessons to be learned at a giant flea market. For instance, these places are filled with junk. I mean no offense. By junk, I mean someone else’s lovely merchandise that they have chosen to sell, for obvious reasons.

You see the same junk over and over. Go to any flea market and you’ll see Elvis Presley’s mug on hundreds – nay, thousands – of items. The King is everywhere. He’s on black velvet, he’s on plates. He’s on blankets and mirrors and coffee mugs. Elvis sort of looks like Wayne Newton or Leonard Nimoy in some of the artistic renderings.

This means nothing. The point is that flea markets are full of junk. The idea is to go in there, look and see if there’s something you want, and go on with your life.

Unless you’re a professional flea marketeer, that is. And you can spot a professional a mile away. That’s because they don’t move so fast. In fact, with a flea marketeer on a hot streak, motion is not visible to the naked eye. A snail outpaces a professional flea marketeer at work.

When I go to a flea market (usually at gunpoint), I have a certain technique. I walk through aisles full of junk and wait to see if something catches my eye. If I spot such an item, I’ll stop to look at it. I’ll either buy it or move on. One way or another, I’m moving on.

Not so with a pro. I went shopping with a pro this weekend and it was a clinic in human behavior. A pro looks at each and every item at length. It doesn’t matter if they plan to buy it or not. The pro will pick up a hairless troll doll with a missing leg and ponder it for several minutes before moving on to the next item (an Elvis Pez dispenser).

They will pause to gawk at things that aren’t even for sale: folding chairs, dogs and cigarette butts. In a big place, this can take forever. The flea market will gobble up your weekend.

Which leads me to the other point, that many of these places are too big. I don’t wanna name names. But the Waterfront Flea Market on Maine Street in Brunswick is particularly huge. A professional flea marketeer who goes there needs to bring lunch, a change of clothes and a moving van. A poor sap who gets dragged along for the ride needs to bring a therapist. He needs to resign himself to pacing the parking lot, dreaming of the beach and weeping. He will go in clean-shaven and come out with an itchy, full beard. That’s why they call them flea markets.

In keeping with the street talk theme, I’ll pontificate here about the correlation between flea markets and crime. There’s got to be one. I was fighting the urge to commit mayhem myself after the first hour passed at the giant flea market. Arson came to mind.

One thing that seems certain is that the items are not hot. Who would steal a hairless troll doll? A flea marketeer might spend a hundred dollars on one (“you can’t find these just anywhere, you know,”) but even a 10-year-old delinquent wouldn’t swipe one.

I wonder if there’s a correlation to divorce rates, as well. You picture the spouse of a professional marketeer running out and having an affair while the loved one scavenges among piles of junk. He or she could have several affairs. He or she could start a whole new family while the husband or wife shops.

There’s probably a correlation between flea markets and unexplained disappearances, too. But I don’t have time to go into it. I’ve gotta go hang up this 8-foot by 10-foot Elvis tapestry. At least, I think that’s Elvis.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.