The Dodge Grand Caravan had a screw in the right front tire the other day.

It was a slow leak, and I probably could have lived with it for a while.

I have a compressor now at the house…so I could have just kept filling it with air…but it’s Jenny’s car and it’s good not to have anything that’s not working “just right” going on with it.

I worry less when there’s not anything that might fly off or break down happening with the old minivan.

I took the car to Sam’s Club, where we bought the tires…and in a short while, the tire department called my name.

It didn’t take them very long to fix the tire.  They called my name quickly.

“You’ve got a lug nut that’s cross threaded…couldn’t get it off….so we can’t fix the tire.”

What? They can’t fix the tire? That’s why I brought it in in the first place…

It was something about breaking the stud when they torqued the nut off….they wouldn’t do it, and if they did it and the stud broke, they’d have to call a wrecker to have it towed to a place that was competent at replacing wheel studs.  They couldn’t do it there…and I guess they couldn’t trust that I could drive the vehicle to get the repair done myself.

So I jacked it up in the parking lot, broke the stud myself (in the parking lot), rolled the tire with the screw into the tire repair center, and they fixed it for me.

I guess it was OK if I broke things myself.

That’s a long story to set up a longer story.

The guy at the tire store plugged/patched (they use a different kind of patch at Sam’s…I’m not sure exactly what they do) the tire…and then I imagine he balanced it.

I say that I imagine he balanced it because that’s what you’re supposed to do.  You balance it, or it will roll funny.  It will wobble or pull hard…it will make the car drive weird.

I imagine that he balanced the tire after putting in the plug….. to finish the job correctly.

The car wobbles now. The car pulls hard to the right.

The car drives weird.

Not weird like, “We’re going to crash!!! WE’RE GOING TO CRASH!!!”

Just weird like, “Man…this is a pain in the rear.  Do you feel that wobble?! Watch this…see how it pulls to the right?!!”

I think that Jenny wishes I’d quit talking about it.

So I need to take it back to Sam’s and get someone to check it.

I don’t think that missing a stud would make it wobble like that…I think that something’s wrong with the tire.

The funny thing about it all is that, except for me noticing that things aren’t “rolling right”, the tire looks perfectly normal.

It’s round and black and attached securely to the vehicle.

If I didn’t feel the wobble, I would not know that anything was different.

The tire had a hole that was patched…it doesn’t leak air anymore.

It should be good. It should be good to go.

But there was something about patching the problem that set all this in motion.

We needed to compensate for the patch throwing the tire out of balance.

It looks round.  It looks right.

Something’s not right, though.

My car wobbles a little now.

I need to get that tired that tire fixed again.  I need to roll the way it’s supposed to.

“Metaphorically speaking”, I wobble some, too.

I get down the road.  I get where I’m going.

I do wobble some, though.

I must be a little out of balance sometimes.

Maybe it’s a “patch” somewhere along the line that threw me off a little?  I don’t really know.

I know that sometimes, I leak some air.  Jenny complains about that occasionally…”Did you just leak air? OHMYGOSH…YOU DID JUST LEAK…OHMYGOSH…THAT IS SO GROSS!!!WHYDOYOUDOTHAT?!!!”

I look alright.  I’m not round or black…but I still look alright.  To look at me, you would not even know that I’m a little out of balance.

Maybe I need to re-evaluate my alignment….get back to rolling on the “straight and narrow”?

I do know that it bugs me when the minivan shakes.

It bugs me enough to want to correct the problem.

I can’t “just live with” everything that needs “fixin’ “.