Driving to the gym this morning and this Uhaul style small moving truck pulls up next to me. White male, late forties, short cropped hair, slightly overweight. The truck was all yellow but had "DEVL" painted on the side in graffiti style lettering.
Green light and his lane moves a little faster than mind so I think "Is that a business?" and check for the license plate. No license plate. "No license plate? Is that normal?"
He keeps going straight and I merge onto the freeway and it's just bugging me. Do I call 911 just in case? And say what? That I have a weird feeling? I live in a very religious area with very low crime where I'm sure cops are afraid to profile people and here I am asking myself if that's all I'm doing. I try to find a reasonable explanation why a man that age would be driving a truck like that with no plates and no business insignia aside from the letters "DEVL" painted on the side in teenager-vibe graffiti style and I just can't square it.
I get to the gym parking lot but I can't get out of the car I just kept thinking "What if?" I can feel the tug of war going on inside. Do I trust my instincts or explain them away? I look up "DEVL" and "DEVL moving trucks" online and don't see anything. So I think "What's the worst that will happen if I'm wrong and I report this guy? He gets pulled over there's a good explanation for why he doesn't have a plate and everything checks out and he thinks 'Hey, if I don't want to get pulled over maybe I shouldn't drive around in an unlicensed truck with the word "DEVL" on the side?
Eh. So I call. What the hell. The guy should expect this, right? If he wants to have an edgy truck that raises eyebrows, fine. Maybe he's a great guy. Then again, maybe he's a fucking kidnapper/trafficker, I don't know.
I read this book a while back titled "The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals The Protect Us From Violence" by Gavin de Becker. He's supposedly an expert on the protection of public figures and has worked as a security adviser for three separate U.S. Presidents. He says that "Denial is a save now, pay later scheme." Thinking about that is what ultimately made me decide to call.
I don't know. Maybe it was nothing. But I don't feel like that often, and I can usually feel what other people are feeling. If I'm wrong, I maybe have just inconvenienced a perfectly innocent person for a few minutes. And maybe I waited too long to act on my hunch and I just let a serial killer get away. I don't know. Hopefully I did the right thing, and didn't wait too long. If it ever happens again, I don't think I'll hesitate so much.
A few weeks ago my daughter was walking/jogging on a country road near her house when a car passed her, stopped and someone got out of the passenger side for a bit. She thought they lost something or who knows. She felt suspicious at what they were doing so she pretended to tie her shoe so she wouldn't pass them. They stopped further up the road and she tried calling someone and stopped to talk so as not to go near them. She was near a house that had workers in it. They turned around and stopped again in front of her after she turned around and she again didn't go by them. When they left she ran like hell to her street. When she told me about it I told her to make a police report. While they didn't do anything illegal, what they did was very strange. She is late 30's and very in tune to all that is going on but they probably thought she was young and gullible...who knows? Again better safe than sorry. It happens in small towns too. She did make a police report and at least it is documented. No license plate...she didn't have her glasses or contacts on.