Everybody, Always

having the time of their lives. But me? I was just ready for bed.
The flight home was uneventful. I didn’t do any barrel rolls or weave
through any canyons. When I got near the airport in my hometown, I went
through the landing procedures and checklists. One of the last steps was
pulling the lever to lower the landing gear. There are green lights on the
control panel to let the pilot know each wheel is completely down,
locked, and ready to hit the runway. When you see three green lights on
the panel, you’re ready to land.
I pulled the lever and could hear the wheels rotating into position,
then something happened I wasn’t counting on. I only got two green
lights—one for each of the back two wheels. There was no green light for
the nose gear. I wasn’t tired anymore. I called the control tower, trying to
play it cool.
“Tower, I don’t think I have a nose wheel.”
“This is the tower. Copy. Please fly by the tower. I’ll try to get a
visual on your landing gear.”
I adjusted my flight path to “buzz the tower.” I felt like Tom Cruise in
Top Gun, except it was dark and no one could see me. When I had flown
past the tower, the controller called back over the radio.
“This is the tower. It’s too dark. I can’t tell if the gear’s down.”
Wait, what? That’s it? That’s all he had to say? I wanted to yell back
over the radio, “What do you mean you can’t tell? You’re the guy in the
control tower. You’re supposed to know stuff!”
After a minute or two, the controller came on the radio again and told
me to fly by the tower again, so I did. Once again, he told me he couldn’t
tell. I was stuck with just my two green lights.
Another few long minutes passed, and he crackled through the radio
again. “Are you declaring an emergency?”
Chuckling, I said, “Buddy, I declared an emergency in my shorts
about fifteen minutes ago.”
My mind was working furiously to figure out how I could get out of
this. None of the options I could think of sounded very attractive. If I