I Don't Know...Maybe Someone Did Steal My Lug Nuts

The other day I walked passed my car and noticed something missing...two things, actually. The back passenger-side tire had three lug nuts holding the tire to the car.

There's supposed to be five.

It's an old car, over fifteen years old to be exact. Even though it's not supposed to happen, I suspect things fall off cars that are over fifteen years old frequently. 

But not lug nuts. They're only supposed to come off only when you take them off.

We've had some work done on the car tires recently. I thought maybe the guys (or gals...) at the tire place failed to put on all five lug nuts. It wasn't until I was at the auto parts store buying replacement lug nuts that a thought hit me.

Maybe someone stole them off my car.

Back when my wife and I were first married, I owned a 1976 VS Beetle. We lived in Salt Lake. It wasn't the worst part of town, but it wasn't the best, either. I woke up one morning and my car was not parked where I left it the night before. It was halfway down the block on the wrong side of the street. Turns out, someone broke into my bug and stole the back seat and the knobs off the original VW radio.

When I told people the story, they'd inevitably ask,"Why would someone steal the knobs off your radio?" I even asked myself the same question. Then I went about trying to replace those radio knobs and I became fully aware of why a person desperately wanting radio knobs for a classic 1976 VW Beetle would break into a stranger's (then again, maybe it was someone I knew...) car and steal the knobs off the radio. They were hard to replace. This was before Amazon or Ebay or the internet. There was no "one click to buy" option.

This was the thought I had while waiting for the parts guy to fetch my replacement parts. Turns out, not all lug nuts for a mid-2000s Pontiac are the same. Since I wasn't driving the car, I got two that turned out to not be the same as the others. 

Maybe someone needed replacement lug nuts so bad that they stole them off my car, so all of their lug nuts would match. I guess some people need everything to match. Not me--when one of the hubcaps flew off the car (when it was younger than fifteen years old...), I didn't mind. Eventually, the others came off, too. And my car has one door a different color than the other three. For me, having five lug nuts holding the tire to the car is what's most important.

Then again, I'm sure the tire guys/girls forgot to replace all five lug nuts when we got the tire serviced. Still, I like my alternate explanation. It's more fun.