My daughter and I often enjoy playing with this remote controlled toy boat we bought a while back.

It’s kind of a silly thing, but it gets us out of the house, and I believe that some of the most important lessons are learned in the great outdoors.

I learned an important one when were out with the boat a couple of weeks ago.

My six-year-old daughter Molly and I went down to the Cibolo Creek to launch the boat at a location about half a mile from our house. We sometimes drive it on the pond at the park in Karnes City, but since we live ten miles from the Karnes City park, and with the current cost of gas, we are now looking for fun things to do that are closer to home.

Driving the boat on the creek is more challenging.

There is the current of the running water we have to contend with and because of this; there is a much greater risk of losing the boat if something goes wrong.

Because we don’t want to lose the boat, we are careful not to let is go out of the range of the remote control – especially on the downstream side.

After launching the boat, I handed over the controls to my daughter. She is getting more and more skilled at using the remote control to make the boat go where she wants.

Suddenly, however, she made a wrong turn and drove the boat right straight into the bank. As the boat has no "reverse" gear, we were left with the only option of driving it harder and harder straight into the bank, with the hope it would bounce off and turn. I looked up and saw that it was a very steep bank, and I wasn’t sure I could climb down to retrieve the boat by hand.

"Why did you do that?" I scolded Molly. "Why didn’t you turn before you hit the bank?"

"I’m sorry, Dad," she said timidly. I could tell she felt badly about it. She didn’t want to lose the boat.

After assessing the situation, I realized we were faced with two choices: Leave the boat stuck, or climb down and get it.

It was very difficult, but I managed somehow to climb down the steep creek bank and snatch the boat out of the water.

When I brought it to the place at creek’s edge where we had launched it, I made sure to mention to Molly how important it was to turn before hitting the banks of the creek.

We continued to drive the boat for a while, but Molly didn’t want to take a turn – she was worried she might lose control of it again, so she was happy watching me drive the boat back and forth, up and down the Cibolo Creek.

When the battery ran down, it was time to put the back-up battery in. We have two batteries that are rechargeable. Each runs for about 15 minutes, so with two we are able to get about half an hour of running time.

I took the boat out of the water and opened it up to change the battery. I turned the power switch off inside the boat before connecting the fresh battery, and after the battery was connected, I closed the cover and pushed the boat out into the water.

It didn’t take me long to realize that I had forgotten to turn on the power switch inside the boat.

Uh oh.

Without the power switch turned on, it was dead in the water, slowly drifting downstream and we had no way of controlling it.

"What happened?" Molly asked.

"I made a bad mistake," I told her. "I forgot to turn the boat on before putting it in the water."

At this point, I felt lower than a grasshopper’s belly.

Just a short while earlier, I was scolding a six-year-old girl for making a mistake, and here I was making an even stupider mistake that might very well cause us to lose our boat.

"See, Molly?" I said. "Everyone makes mistakes – even daddies. I’m really sorry that I yelled at you earlier."

"That’s okay, Dad," she said, "but how are we going to get the boat out of the water?"

We tried throwing some mud clods into the water near the boat, hoping it would cause the boat to drift to the side where we could reach down and get it out, but this idea didn’t work – the boat only went further into the center of the current.

I called my wife and told her about our situation and told her that we may be a little later than expected.

We walked downstream and watched helplessly as the boat drifted further and further, staying right in the middle of the current where we could not reach it.

I decided that we’d follow it about a quarter of a mile, and if it hadn’t drifted to the edge by then, then we would have to just let it go.

Just when we had reached the point where we could follow it no further, fate stepped in and lent a helping hand.

I don’t know if it was divine intervention, or just plain dumb luck, but at the last possible moment the boat drifted over to our side of the creek. I grabbed the longest stick I could find and I reached out and snagged the boat and brought it back to shore.

We both learned some lessons that day.

The one I’ll remember is how important it is to be patient with one another when we make mistakes. And always remember that when you are on the "making" end of a mistake, then it’s sure nice when the person on the other end is kind and patient and doesn’t hold it against us.

There was another lesson that we acted on as soon as we got home.

We got a permanent marker and wrote our name, address and phone number on the boat with instructions saying, "If found, please return to…"