Help, I'm Stuck!

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On a school field trip to St. Augustine, Florida (the nation's oldest city) several years ago, I chaperoned so that I could spend some time with my daughter. I was grouped with five middle school girls (yes, I survived!), and after a full day of exploring the 450 year old town, the school group reconvened at a large playground near where the buses would be picking us up. When it was time to board the buses and head home. the teachers came up one child short on the count. Repeated counts kept coming up one short. It didn't take us long to figure out who the missing child was, but finding him proved to be a much more daunting task. Finally, after fanning out and searching around the downtown area of the city, a woman came up to us and said there was a kid stuck underneath one of the playground pieces. I went over to take a look with another teacher, and sure enough, it was our missing kid. There was a part of the playground where the mulch underneath had either been dug out or worn away, but it created a small crawl space to get under the playground. This boy crawled in and got stuck. To avoid embarrassing this child any further than he already was, I asked the teacher to gather everyone and head back to the bus, and my daughter and I would stay with the child and figure out how we would get him out of there. After assessing the situation, the only solution was to dig, to create a hole big enough we could drag the kid out. My daughter and I got down on our hands and knees and started digging. It took us a good 30 minutes, but we finally created a space big enough to grab the boy by his feet and drag him backwards out of his captive hole. This particular boy was one of the largest in his class, and considered a "tough guy." Not a bully, mind you, but one of those kids who seem to be completely fearless. But when we pulled him out of that hole underneath the playground, he was balling his eyes out! Not wanting the other kids to see him that way, I gave my daughter some money and told her to go buy a couple of bottles of water, and then I took the boy to the bathroom to clean him up a bit. He had dirt all over him! When we finally got him looking somewhat presentable, we headed back to the bus. I told both him and my daughter not to mention what happened to anyone on the bus, and that we would say he was shopping and had just lost track of time. We got back on the bus and I gave the "made-up" story to the teacher in charge. I said it loudly enough that the other students could hear. I then gave the teacher a look and a nod, and she gave me a nod back, indicating that she understood what I was doing to save the boy embarrassment. Thankfully, after a long day, almost everyone slept on the 1.5 hour bus ride back home. I thought of this story when I ran into the boy yesterday. He is now in high school, and judging by his size, probably a linebacker on the high school football team. Let's hope he's learned his lesson and doesn't go around crawling into tight spaces anymore! With his current size, I don't think I could pull him out of any more tight spots! lol