This post originally timestamped August 6, at 11:46PM.

Gah, that was terrifying. Tonight, we got together with another couple and their friend for a birthday dinner. We arrived in two cars, as my parents, my aunt, and I wanted to visit the Art Fest beforehand. The first car was a massive suburban. The second was a lightweight little Jeep. I chose to ride home in the Jeep with my uncle, partly for the conversation and partly to observe him driving stick (he’s been giving me lessons). Now, we got a lot of rain during dinner, so the roads were still pretty wet, the sky was rapidly darkening, and the ride from town to my aunt and uncle’s cabin was about an hour. The road was more or less empty all the way, and of course, in the winding mountain roads, there were no street lights.

About halfway in, the headlights suddenly went out. We slowed to a stop as my uncle attempted to fiddle with the various knobs and levers and switches on the dash and steering column. I was pretty much paralyzed with fear. I wasn’t thinking rationally, terrified that someone could suddenly barrel into us without us seeing them. As if all cars suddenly didn’t have headlights, rather than just ours. And our car was a tiny Jeep! We could be crumpled like tinfoil! Stupid irrational brain.

Eventually, my uncle got the lights working again, but after that, I was living in constant fear that they would go off again. And my fears were justified, because about 5 minutes from their cabin, the lights went out again. My uncle kept fussing with the switch he’d found before, but the lights would only blink on for a second or two, then turn off again. After about a minute of flipping the switch on and off, our headlights blinking like morse code, my uncle pulled over and waited for my aunt and my parents in the massive Suburban to catch up with us. While we were waiting, my uncle managed to get a steady again, but we figured it would be safest to have an escort. A few minutes later, my aunt showed up, and wouldn’t you know it? The lights stayed on for the entire rest of the ride home.