Page 160 - Never Fly Solo

NEW DAY, NEW JET | 133
Every fear and self-doubt I could conjure up swirled
through my head. I imagined my commander coming down
on me hard: “All right, Lieutenant Waldman, you mess up
one more time and you’re history!”
That’s when it happened.
Major Free walked into the room and sized me up. I stood
at attention, braced myself, and saluted smartly.
“OK, Waldo,” he said, “it’s a new day, new jet. Are you
ready to pass this flight, or what?”
He smiled and reached out to shake my hand.
At that moment, I could sense the energy in the room
shift. Suddenly, everything changed. At least, in my head it
did. I went from intimidation to inspiration, and a sensation
of relief traveled from my head to my toes. All that stress and
anxiety I had bottled up exploded out of me like a bullet and
transformed itself into a shot of adrenaline. I could have
knocked over a brick wall or run a marathon in the combat
boots I was wearing.
New day, new jet. Wow. I had never heard that expression
before. But somehow, those four words, and the man speak-
ing them, changed my attitude from fear to focus just like
that.
Major Free knew I was nervous, fearful, and full of doubt.
He had seen it before with hundreds of young officers like me.
The moment he walked into that briefing room, he could eas-
ily have given me the final nudge over the cliff of doubt where
I stood and into the abyss of failure—a flightless path that
would forever have defined me as someone who couldn’t
handle any pressure and couldn’t perform because of his fears.
I verged on becoming a man who had failed to reach a goal
he wanted more than anything else in the world. But with
those four words, “new day, new jet,” I had a fresh start. My