I've made plenty of booboo's, as have all of my friends. Any pilot says he/she has never made a mistake is either a consumate liar or never flown an a/c.
Only one that comes to mind at the moment which had me genuinely worried and could have been nasty had I made the wrong decision, was when I was flying Bulldogs with the UAS back in '91. I'd been sent off on a solo GH sortie to practice aeros over Wensleydale which was fine with me.
Lovely flying day, good viz, scattered fair weather Cu. I had selected something like 5000' as my base height for manoeuvres and had been happily looping and rolling for about 30 minutes or so. I chose to perform another loop, put the 'dog into a shallow dive for entry speed (about 145kts I think), pulled up into a nice entry to the loop, over the top with wings level for a change and was feeling so smug with myself for a nicely executed loop (so far), that I was far too leisurely in controlling the a/c on the pullout. Speed accelerated rapidly away even though the throttle was closed, through 160kts and heading for Vne.
Oops-a-daisy, major rollicking for this one I thought. Managed to pull out of the dive, but it registered 5.5 on the g-meter in the process. We'd been taught that 3 to 3.5 would be a normal figure. The a/c was still pretty fast, but the speed was coming down nicely and at 120kts or so I fed the power back in.
It was then that the a/c started vibrating quite badly (like pre-stall buffet) and the engine sounded like a bag of spanners. I had no idea what was going on. This really wasn't normal or anything I understood, and for a moment or two I just froze. I scanned the instruments and everything appeared normal, nothing unusual on the t+p's, even the speed was back to 100kts, but still the a/c was shaking and the engine running rough. I really didn't know what to do.
I figured it would be a good idea to suss out where I was and get back to Leeming sharpish as I though that there was a good chance the wings would fall off.
All the time I was going through in my mind the abandonment drill, and if things got worse that was exactly what I was going to do, even if it was only an engine failure. I figured I'd take my chances on the end of a parachute.
Thankfully, the a/c stopped vibrating, the engine ran smooth and I got back to base without any hassle. I let the groundcrew know what had happened with the pullout from the loop as 5.5g was the airframe limit, but nothing about the rest. Not the smartest of decisions. Similarly, there was no mention of it to the QFI's, especially as I had visions of the boss (who was a fearsome old b#gger) rearranging my anatomy and inviting me not to show my face again.
Now that I'm a little older and wiser, I don't know why I was so eager to jump out of the a/c, and I really would have done too as I was pretty scared at the time. Given how nicely most of these smaller a/c glide, it really shouldn't be a major problem to stick with it and put it down somewhere. If I had the option again, I'd only consider abandoning if the damn thing was on fire or there really was nowhere you could put it down without killing yourself. I'm still not entirely sure of the cause of the vibration, though I suspect now it was probably control flutter.
I suppose the lessons I learned from that were not just about how quickly the a/c can get away from you if you're not paying attention, but that nobody will kill you for confessing to not knowing what you're doing. If you're scared, or unsure, get on the radio and bloody well tell someone.