I did have another experience when I was about nine. Back in the sixties, my family lived in Yokosuka Japan, and the terrain was honeycombed with lots of tunnels from WWII. Even though they had been sealed, kids can be inventive, and my brother and I figured out how to get into one of those tunnels.
My dad had a large battery you could sling over your shoulder, and a handheld spotlight you could plug into it. It was brighter than hell. So we went into this tunnel, and closed how we got in so nobody could notice we were in there.
We explored really far into this tunnel, and weren’t really keeping track of the twists and turns, but I suppose we could have figured it out on the return.
So here we are, deep into this tunnel, and all of a sudden my brother drops the spotlight and it goes out.
And it doesn’t come back on. We sat there for about ten minutes in the pitch black, completely and totally blind trying to figure out why the light wouldn’t come on. I distinctly remember my panic level beginning to rise when the light didn’t come back on immediately.
We didn’t have a backup light, and we didn’t even have any matches. I remember my heart starting to pound, as the panic began to rise in our speech, the realization of the situation we had put ourselves in.
Eventually, we realized the problem wasn’t with the light, but with the cigarette lighter power connecter on the shoulder slung battery. We had to pull it out and reseat it a few times, and eventually the light came on.
We both knew that we would have never been found in time. I suppose some kind of huge search of the base would have taken place, but we were sneaky enough going in and covering our tracks we might have sealed our own fate.
Oy veh, you stop every mother’s heart with your story. I’m glad you two little devils made it back alive!