If U're Good, I'll Even Let U Steer

I think I feel a rip off coming on...

Chuck (TFT) has been wobbling at high speeds for a while now, and we have a three-hour trip planned in a fe days so I thought I'd take him in and get his tires balanced so we wouldn't have to worry about losing one and getting stuck in Rhode Island any longer than is strictly necessary.

There is a tire place is right up the road. not Jimmy's, which I wrote about before, but it does have the advantage of being close enough to walk home from. I planned to drop off Chuck, then walk up to the post office, and -- if he hadn't called me on the cell already to tell me he was finished -- to walk home and wait for him to call. I planned to tell him when I dropped Chuck off that all I wanted was the tires balanced; that, if he found anything else wrong, I can't afford to fix it, so he shouldn't even ask. I planned to ask him to just please make a note of anything he noticed and carry on. I planned on being so savvy and smart.

Instead, what happened was, the building says "TIRE ALIGNMENT CENTER" on the side in big blue letters, so when I walked in, I accidentally said "I need an alignment" without even noticing that I misspoke.

"What makes you think so?"

"Well, it wobbles if I go above 55, 60 or so."

"An alignment won't fix that."

And with those five words, with me still not noticing we were talking about two different things, my brain and my brilliant plan went out the window. He asked me what kind of car I had, and I could not remember (I said Plymouth Reliant; it's a Voyager). He asked me for my license plate, and I recited two different ones from two different cars, neither of which was Chuck (TFT), but I couldn't remember this one until he was outside writing it down. And noticing it was a minivan and not a K car. By the time I handed him the keys, I felt like I should have just put my wallet on the counter, my pants around my ankles, and my palms down on the floor.

So now I'm not getting much done while I wait for him to call and tell me Chuck needs a thousand dollars worth of work. I plan to tell him, no matter what he says, that I meant to ask him to balance the tires; I plan to tell him to please just rotate them and do that and nothing else. I plan to make up for the girlie idiot I behaved like before.

But I'm practicing grabbing my ankles, just in case.