Humans are squishy, flawed creatures. Our imperfections are part of what makes us so interesting! But the little things that make us human can also be a real pain in the backside. Sometimes you might put something on top of your car and then proceed to forget it’s there. Who knows how far you might drive before you realize you’ve screwed up. Have you ever left something on top of your car? If so, what did you lose?
I am a very forgetful person. I can take down an important note in my head one minute and forget it the next minute. Sometimes it’s unimportant stuff, like a song I just heard, and sometimes it’s something important, like the date of my niece’s birthday party. Sorry, Porsche (not her real name). I’ve also forgotten more awesome headlines and story ideas than I’m willing to admit.
Thankfully, I combat that nowadays by jotting things down in a notes app as soon as things come to mind. Sadly, I guess I don’t do that for forgetting things on top of cars.
So far as I can remember, I’ve thus far left a phone on my car’s roof twice and a debit card on my roof twice. The worst one happened last year when I took a road trip to Florida in my old 2010 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI. I stopped at the Buc-ee’s in Calhoun, Georgia, snapping the picture below. I didn’t get fuel here, but a brisket sandwich and some Red Bull. I then proceeded to drive about 200 miles south, making it well past Atlanta.
As I was jamming out to some tunes and troubleshooting an underboost issue, it hit me that I didn’t remember where I put my card. Ah, “it’s fine,” I thought, I’ll just stick my hand in my purse’s card slot and it’ll be there. Uh oh.
Panic slowly crept in. I was carving some curves earlier, maybe I tossed the card on the floor? I searched the entire car and found nothing. That’s when I made a startling realization. I most likely left the card on the roof while I left that Buc-ee’s. But it was now around three hours later and around 180 miles of distance. I then looked at the fuel gauge in the Jetta. It showed that if I turned around right away, I’d make it back to the Buc-ee’s with only 20 miles of range to spare. Those gauges are notoriously incorrect and the car’s turbo wasn’t boosting as it should have been, but I technically had enough fuel to make it.
I called my wife, turned around, and drove the slowest, quietest highway drive of my life. If that card wasn’t there I was boned. I already accidentally forgot my credit card and emergency cash at home and I was traveling solo in an area where I had no relatives and no friends. Sure, I could have used my phone for any NFC-based transactions, but that wasn’t going to work for a hotel room.
Those 180 miles felt like they could have been 1,800 miles. When I arrived at the Buc-ee’s, the Jetta’s range estimator showed a big fat zero miles. None of the employees saw my card and it wasn’t at the pump, either. In my desperation, I also searched the trash cans, even though I knew they had been emptied.
I got so desperate that I started searching the street leading from the Buc-ee’s to the interstate (above). Sure enough, I saw my card sitting in the middle of a frontage road.
It had gotten run over by countless cars, but it was in ok shape and nobody spent a dime. The Buc-ee’s people were shocked. Let’s say I’ve since made sure something like that never happened again.
[Editor’s Note: I’m not sure this counts, but I once lost an entire re-upholstered armchair from the roof of my Beetle. 
And I know we’ve all driven off with beverages on our roofs, but I happen to have me doing so on video:
View this post on Instagram
Man, that’s embarassing. – JT]
How about you? What have you lost on top of your car?
Actually, never.
I grew up before this was common, and I paid attention to what I was doing
or carrying at any given time. This was not uncommon in my time.
The only concession I can provide in a similar way,
is that I used to collect found keys dropped on sidewalks.
I once found a 1980s Pontiac key which started a friend’s 1967 restored
Firebird, and I’d move it around the parking lot where we worked.
While we all used to lift and move Triumph or MG cars at the time,
Tony couldn’t figure out how his heavy car so often got moved
around the parking lot. I eventually surrendered that key to Tony.
He took it well, and we remained friends for years afterwards.
“but I once lost an entire re-upholstered armchair from the roof of my Beetle.”
Mr. Bean!!! That’s my favorite scene where he drives from the chair on his Mini
Twice I’ve driven off with my phone on my car. Once in a local Kohl’s parking lot when I was an idiot teenager, realized almost immediately after driving off but it broke upon ground impact. And once from a gas station after being distracted from my wife and it hung on for dear life until I hit the on ramp to the interstate where it fell off. Realized 1/2 hour later, had her call it, and a highway construction worker answered it and stuck around his jobsite after quitting time for me to come back, and then refused to accept any cash for his troubles. Good guy that was.
My other idiot habit became locking my keys in my truck. I was doing new construction housing on a military base and had gotten in the habit of leaving my keys in the ignition with the windows open. It also had a bad ignition switch and would let me pull the key out with the engine still running so I got into another dumb habit of that. After I sold it and got my next truck that did NOT have a remote key fob because why wouldn’t that be standard even for fleet vehicles in 2018, I locked my keys in it at least 4-5 times before I unwired that habit. Made good use of my AAA membership that year.
This must be a tall persons’ problem. Ya’ll’s cars are too small! I generally like vehicles about my own height, and it’s not so tempting to place items up there.
Kind of like losing something? Moving from CO to NY, xc90 loaded to the gunwales, including bicycles on the roof. Nasty high plains crosswinds that day in eastern CO/western KS broke my roof racks downtube holder, and the leeward bike fall over onto the side of the car with an incredible crash as the tires were still strapped into the trays. pedal missed the right rear window by an inch and left a pretty good dent. I guess the racks structural integrity was lost off the roof that day.
I also helped a friend retrieve his expensive mtb after it flew off the roof of his car, roof rack and all, at 70 mph+. only the saddle and grips suffered, bike frame was fine. Crazy
2 Gas caps on my Samurai, before I learned that the roof was not a safe place to leave anything. Cars are for driving, not bookshelves 🙂
Back when I was a kid (maybe 7 or 8) I had a box of cassette tapes with music and audio plays that I would listen to on long road trips on my walkman.
We were on our way to Lake Garda, somewhere in the South of Germany with our travel trailer and all our bikes on a roof rack, when we stopped at a rest stop. When we were all getting back in the vehicle the box was in the way and one of my parents left the box tucked between the roof rack and roof. After getting back on the Autobahn the box fell off the car with all my tapes in it. I was so sad and my parents felt really bad. They did get me a couple of new tapes to listen to at the next big travel stop. As a parent, I totally get that that was as much for them as it was for me.
On a mild Summer night in 2012 I went to a Walgreens to return some DVDs at a Redbox. I parked right in front of it and since there was a person using it and another person in line, I waited, leaning against the side of my car. My wallet in my back pocket was bothering me, so I put it on the roof. Of course, after returning my DVDs I never remembered or noticed my wallet up there and only noticed it missing when I returned home and finished packing for an overseas trip I was leaving for the next morning.
I immediately went back to the Walgreens, which had just closed. I was able to get the attention of one of the staff and they were nice enough to get the store manager who told me they would look at the surveillance video. A while later they came back and told me they were able to determine that someone had found my wallet, but not dropped it off in the store.
They recommended I call the police, so that they could let them review the video, which I did (non-emergency). While the officer was speaking with the store manager, they received a call from the station asking if he was the one out for a missing wallet and that one had just been dropped off at the police station. The officer verified the description matched and sent me to go to the station. It was my wallet, everything still in it. Turns out an employee at the DA’s office found it and dropped it off at the police station on their way home from running errands.
And of course about 3-6 coffees that I left on the roof at different times…
3 times, always coffee.
Never. That’s how often. Not even loose snow.
My dad and I once lost a mattress going south on LSD. We just left it. However, both putting it on the roof and leaving it were entirely intentional, it was the losing it that was most certainly not.
I think losing it on LSD is pretty common, actually.
For me the worst one was one time I was doing some electrical work on my car in a parking lot in the winter at night, (as one does), and I fixed my issue, then drove home accidentally leaving my really nice fluke multimeter on the roof:(. Still miss that one
Oooouch. That’s rough. My Fluke is certainly the highest quality tool I own. The days of guessing at voltage with a free-with-coupon harbor freight garbage meter went on too long as it was, especially since I was using an 87V at work.
Not the roof, but the wiper cowl. Left a banana there while I rushed back in the house to grab my keys. Arrived at work and noticed a very frozen banana – it’s a good thing I didn’t need to use said wipers on the way.
Not me but a friend who works in law enforcement. He’s a detective so wears civilian clothes to work.
Heading off to work one morning he left his service firearm inside a carry pouch on the roof of his car. Drove off not realising.
Got to work and it was panic stations. Losing your service pistol (or any sort of firearm) is a serious offence in this country.
A neighbour saw the pouch on the road and realising who it belonged to, brought it to his wife. What could have been a dismissal offence become a reprimand.
Paper coffee cups, so many paper coffee cups.
Mercedes, pretty cool that you found it! You certainly got lucky to get it back.
Spring is coming! I’m so excited I wet my plants.
Once I was going to return a pile of books to library. When I arrived at the library I started to look around for the books and couldn’t find them in my car. I stepped out and saw one book on the roof of my car: it was the autobiography of Johnny Cash. I figured that Johnny Cash was the toughest one of the author’s whom books I had. (Luckily I found the rest of the books at the side of the road when I drove the route again.)
Yeah otherwise “Bookman” the library cop would have been on the case!
The roof of my van is ten feet tall. I haven’t accidentally set something up there. Yet.
My old conversion Econoline had a roof rack. Not like one of those contractor van roof racks that’s huge, sturdy, and unsightly, but a small, short one that basically took up the back half of the roof’s area. Two front-to-back pieces, plus two crossbars.
On a vacation, we strapped a Sears X-Cargo container to it to fit more stuff altogether and it held fine. (Side note, the picture of the snail on the Sears thing makes for either the dumbest or most brilliant pun in retail history.)
Well, in a later year for another vacation, I strapped that to the roof on my own, planning to drive around with it empty for a while to ensure I did it correctly before actually going on vacation. (Side note, there was a certain irony in losing interior space to the small ladder inside the van to actually be able to reach the container.)
On a rural road in Bloomsburg, I hear a loud thunk and look in my left mirror to discover the container, strapped to one of the crossbars, which is now dangling from the side, connected only by some liner or other loose connecting thing between the crossbar and the side rail that’s actually embedded in the roof.
Turns out the crossbars were only held in by friction, which is absolutely insane. And, of course, this whole incident caused that left-side rail to bend sideways, and it’s coming out of the roof. I tried removing the rack altogether myself, but it was riveted or attached in some way that caused the metal to open up to invite rain in.
Ended up paying a dealership $200 to completely remove the rack and seal/waterproof the holes.
Was just glad the incident happened on an empty road, because I was furious at the time. I just shoved the container inside the van til I could get home.
Cats.
When the family would take a long road trip in the VW bus we always took the damn cat. Because he hated riding in the car, we would just put his ass on the roof while loading luggage, people, etc. and the cat was always the last item loaded.
Can’t tell you how many times that little turd rode on the roof until Mom would ask “where’s the damn cat?”
We would look up and (usually) see his paws hooked over into the space where the sunroof was. At 60 mph…good times.
Wallet and cell phones. We were moving to a new place, me and the wife. We were unloading the bed of the Toyota pick up when her phone rang. Turns out the caller saw the phone and wallet fly off the roof as we passed his place.
The phone was toast, but the wallet still had all the credit cars and cash intact.
Tried to reward him a 100 bucks for the kindness and honesty.
He declined despite my best efforts.
The next day he called the wife again.
Because my dumb ass had left a box of very important papers related to the purchase of our new home on the roof.
The wife would not give me the truck keys till the roof was checked…
Brain damage is a terrible thing sometimes. YMMV
VW Bus? 60 mph? I did not know that was physically possible.
I remember being in Eugene, OR seeing many VW Buses with bumper stickers that stated:
4,000 lbs. 40 hp. Do the math.
lol…our bus (s) always had built motors in them. we could hit 70mph crossing Nebraska in a headwind. seriously. even had one with a Porsche engine once.
my old man had a habit of blowing the stock ones apart, so the new engines were way overbuilt, everything considered.
we would go skiing in the rockies every winter and the old man would wind that thing out in second or third gear doing the mountain passes.
remember him being pulled over doing well over 75 several times.
no shit.
can still hear Mom saying “you’re gonna blow up another one damn it!”
my childhood was like nuts.
100 horsepounds, by my reckoning.