My fraternity brother. Four of us were all smashed, gazing across Bass Lake. Three of us decided to go for a drive, but he refused to get off the roof of my car. I drove most of the way around Bass Lake, slowly, with him on the roof. He enjoyed it immensely.
I left a small glass ashtray on the bumper of a rented pickup truck once. I drove 15 miles out of town and into a pretty bumpy field. It was still there.
This is a story that became funny only in retrospect. We adopted a big old gray cat who had been abandoned when some neighbors moved away. We called him Graypet (a feeble pun on the name of a soda, “Grapette.”) Since he was an outside cat, and disinclined to be otherwise, we allowed him to do as he pleased in the yard. One day my husband left the house in a big hurry, jumped in the car, and sped off. As he drove down the expressway, other drivers kept gesturing to him, but he didn’t understand what the gestures meant until he reached his destination. He parked at a Sears store, got out of the car, and saw poor Graypet clinging to the roof of the car desperately (at least there was a luggage rack.) My husband safely returned Graypet home (inside the car this time,) and the silly old thing (meaning the cat, not the husband) continued to sun himself on the roof of the car for years thereafter, having learned nothing from his wild ride.
Oh my gosh, that IS funny in retrospect. I laughed so hard, but those poor other drivers must have been so distressed. I can only imagine my reaction if I saw a big gray cat car-surfing on the expressway. Thanks for sharing that one!
My briefcase, and it stayed up there for the 5 miles I drove home.
When I fill 'er up, the gas cap never leaves my hand… otherwise it’s as good as gone.
A pile of 6 or 7 freshly checked-out library books. I set them on the roof to unlock my door, then climbed in and headed off… I turned the corner out of the alleyway I was parked in and they tumbled all across the intersection. I sped around the block (no space to pull over, but luckily a very short block) and right back to my parking space – some guy walking down the street had retreived most of them and I thanked him profusely. Luckily none of them were damaged.
I left my wallet on the trunk once after getting gas, luckily I only drove about a half-mile home and it managed to stay there.
I’ve left oil caps on top of the engine before, just shutting the hood and leaving them there… lost one that way, didn’t realize it til I went for an oil change and the mechanic goes, “Y’know you’re missing your oil cap?”
It’s not was I lost but what I found. I was driving down a road and saw a blue canvas bank bag in the road. I stopped and picked it up and it had $3400 and a deposit slip in it. At the time I was unemployed and support enforcement was after me. I returned the money to the couple that lost it, the old guy had a habit of leaving stuff on the roof on his car and driving off. The lady even took me out and showed me the sides of the road in front of their house, it was littered with what she estimated 100 coffee cups her husband had left on the roof of his car. I wondered what all the white stuff on the road’s edge was. It was all the broken coffee cups. They rewarded me with a couple hundred bucks and gave me some work for pocket money.
Mrs. Mercotan left an oboe on top of her car. It was when we were back in high school. She and I searched high and low for the damn thing, but never found it. It was the high school’s oboe, and boy, the band director was NOT happy.
We actually bumped into the band director over 20 years later, in an airport in Florida of all places. He remembered her, and the first words out of his mouth were “you’re the one who lost the oboe.”
I left my guitar (in the case) on top of my car back in '76. I was backing up, and it slid off the roof and into the driveway. Messed up the case pretty bady, but no damage to the guitar.
I have to admit back then I left countless cans of beer on top of my car, too.
That was thirty years ago - I don’t drink and drive anymore.
Operating under extreme sleep deprivation, a grueling travel schedule, and my own natural ditziness, I left my laptop on top of my car once. It was Thanksgiving night, and I was driving back to school in another state.
No, it didn’t stay on my roof. It fell off as soon as I merged onto I-90 in Elgin, Illinois, at Route 31.
No, it didn’t survive the ordeal. It probably survived the landing. It didn’t survive being hit by multiple vehicles going at least 65 miles per hour.
Two amazingly lucky things that did happen:
1.) My friend’s dad was able to recover all of the data off of my hard drive, which somehow survived.
2.) The mouse survived. In fact, I’m using it right now.
That was, by the way, the only thing I’d ever left on my car. Ever. And, let me tell you, I haven’t left anything on there since.
Around 1986-87, while in our teens, A friend and I were taking guitar lessons. One day after our lesson we went to a store. For some reason I had set the music books we had just bought on top of the car (perhaps to make room in the back seat for whatever we bought that day). Needless to say, the books were never recovered.
In 2002 I had just gotten my first cell phone and was not accustomed to carrying one around. I hadn’t even had the phone a week when I drove off and realized halfway home that the phone was nowhere to be found. I thought I might have left it on a park bench, but after driving several miles back to the park, I was dismayed to discover that it was not there. A few days later someone tracked me down and contacted me about my lost phone. As expected, it was completely ruined and had to be replaced.
On a slightly related note, there was a time in 1991 when one of our cats was sleeping on the back of the car, but I didn’t see him there. I backed the car out of the carport and the driveway and went down the road (in pouring rain, no less). About a quarter mile from home I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the cat still lying on the trunk lid! I had only driven about 25 to 30 mph by this point, thank goodness. Of course I pulled over and stopped to put him in the car with me to take him back home. He didn’t seem scared or upset, just soaking wet.
Slurpees. About a dozen times. Here’s the scenario:
You come out of 7-11 with a typical load - a bag full of bread and and snacks, maybe a quart of milk or some cream, and a big slurpee in your hand. You get to the car. Keys are in pocket. Put Slurpee on roof, fetch keys from pocket. Proceed to stuff bag and milk and such into the backseat. Perhaps something needs to be rearranged a bit to keep it from tipping if you brake. Your thought thus engaged, you hop into the front seat, start the car, and drive away. About 10 seconds later you think, “Hey, didn’t I buy a slurp…” and the feeling of dread descends as you attempt to look through the rivulets of brownish goopy liquid running down your back window.
And to top it off, you realize that you’re still craving a Slurpee.
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My Nikkormat FT2 35mm camera, which managed to remain on the roof of my mighty '78 Malibu wagon from my parent’s house to the local Rexall drug store, about a mile away. I was wondering why approaching drivers kept hooting their horns at me.
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A pair of CD albums that a friend had given me to listen to just minutes before. They didn’t make it.
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A couple sacks of trash at different times; I would put them on the roof to tote down to the dumpster of my apartment complex as I left for work. The second time I looked in my rear-view and saw a blizzard of garbage trailing me down Sawdust Road, I decided from then on to just walk it down to the bin instead.
The only thing I ever left on the top of my car was my favorite purse. After a day at the county fair, my junior year, I put the bag on top while helping to stuff the giant panda my sister had won, into the back seat. Not only was it my favorite purse but it had nearly every penny I owned, all my ID, friend’s photos, and a really cool calculator that had cost me a fortune. Lesson learned.
A notebook full of confidential paperwork, and my styrofoam box of lunch leftovers. I pulled out of my work’s parking lot and onto Northwest Highway in Chicago, and I noticed a styrofoam container slide down my back window. A second later, I see about 100 sheets of papers blowing in the breeze across Northwest Highway.
Took me 45 minutes to gather all those suckers up while dodging traffic.
Happy
Nothing.
OH SHIT! WHERE’S THE BABY???