Where is an invasion of privacy when you need it?!?

This morning, for the first time ever, I wished with all of my heart for a camera phone. Normally, the idea of a camera phone kind of freaks me out. I mean, people could be taking pictures of you all over the place with it and you'd never know. Plus, it costs more, and I'm cheap. But today, oh today, I would have paid the extra money, so as to have photographic evidence of the story I'm about to tell you.

I was driving in to work this morning, spacing out and listening to my Ipod, as I'm wont to do. I pulled up to the stoplight at the corner of Palatine and Wheeling road. A truck, one of those dumpster type trucks, is ahead of me in the lane next to me. But it's not like a typical garbage truck. It's one of those used for hauling. The back panel of the truck clearly opens up for loading and unloading, and the top of the truck is open--all the better for whatever they're hauling to fly out and hit your windshield.

The truck, this time, appeared to be empty. But as I'm sitting there, a flash of color on the back of the truck catches my attention. It's a scrap of cloth wound in and around one of the hinges of the back panel of the truck, the part the opens and closes for loading. It's a very pale pink. My first thought is, wow, must be one of those red scraps of cloth they use to indicate they're hauling a load that sticks outside the vehicle. It's so old, it's faded to pink instead of red.

But now that it has my attention, I start noticing other things about it. For example, everything in the world is coated right now with a crusty, old gray-white layer of salt. But this cloth appears fairly clean, which is sort of weird if it's an old red cloth that's been out in the sun long enough to fade to pink. Plus, there's something really familiar about the shape of the cloth. Curved edges, one dangling strap.

It is at this moment that I have a lightning fast realization about what I'm looking at -- a pale pink bra. Wrapped in the hinges of this truck. Oh, wow. How freaking weird is that?

I edge up closer in my car and confirm that it is in fact a pink bra, with no visible signs of deterioration or wear (you know what I'm talking about ladies -- this one wasn't stretched out or losing its wires or even broken in any visible way).

My imagination immediately kicks into overdrive. Maybe the truck driver is a kidnapper, using the truck to hide his victim until he has a chance to store her elsewhere. But she's managed to dangle her bra outside the truck in the hopes of gathering some passerby's attention. Or, maybe the truck driver is some kind of sicko who has the bra as some kind of trophy for whatever nefarious deeds he did to the owner of the bra.

Seriously, at one point, I'm contemplating, Do I call the cops? If so, what do I say? "There's a pink bra on this truck. I think there could be trouble." They'd laugh their asses off at me.

And yet, I still noted the name on the door of the truck, Waste Management, and the city, Wheeling, IL. Just in case...

Damn. I wish I'd had my camera.