A little scare last night...

So, this is where we spent part of our night last night - walking through a dark cemetery. Only, the moon wasn't full. It was just a little sliver of light. The evening was dark and cold. At one point I lost sight of Marc and called him on his cell phone, and said, "Under any other circumstances I would be totally freaked out right now, walking through a cemetery by myself like this..."

You see, it all started when we were out running a couple of errands. I convinced Marc to come with me, with the promise, "I swear, we'll be back within 15 minutes." Well, as soon as we got in the car there was an announcement on the radio that a boy with autism from our local high school was lost in the mountains adjacent to the school. So, we made our first stop and then had a little debate - should we go see if we could help? Should we just keep going about our errand-running?

In the end we decided we had to at least see if there was some way we could help. We arrived just as it was getting dark and the guy heading up the search effort assigned us to search the cemetery, which is nearby. We noticed that one volunteer was standing around with a box of flashlights, but for some reason he was unwilling to hand any over. We thought we might have one or two somewhere in the car, so we drove over to the cemetery without thinking more about it. When we arrived, we looked around the car, and nope, no flashlights. Not only that... but we didn't have anything we would need in an emergency. Except a first-aid kit. And ketchup packets in the glove box - an emergency essential. I guess you just don't think about the importance of a lot of little things until you find yourself in an emergency. We now have a new list of things to put in our truck to be better prepared for next time.

So, we met up with a couple of other searchers who were already at the cemetery. We were sweeping the entire area (the two of us being the only ones without flashlights), walking about 20 yards apart from each other. By this time it was getting dark fast. I was assigned a side that had a lot of bushes and trees and was looking closely in every dark cove where someone might be found. That was about the point when I lost where Marc was. I panicked a little. Until that point I hadn't even thought about how frightening this situation would have been had we been there for any other reason.

After we finished searching the cemetery we went back to the search headquarters - a parking lot next to the school. They were setting up large tents and getting ready for an all-nighter. There were lots of people there. It was really an amazing sight. We stayed and helped as long as we could. Even after we left, we couldn't think about anything else for the rest of the night.

Fortunately, we got a phone call very early this morning letting us know that they did find the lost boy at about 1 a.m., walking past the cemetery back towards the high school. Thankfully there was a very happy ending to this story. Such relief!

On the way home, Marc insisted that we stop and pick up a couple of these:

(Hand crank LED flashlight that doesn't require batteries)

And, one of these:

"This 6-in-1 PSD (Personal Safety Device?) incorporates six of the most important tools you will need in an emergency or disaster with the functionality of a radio, cell phone charger, flashlight, emergency flashers, siren and compass that can also be used without batteries."

Little by little we'll be more and more prepared.