When I graduated from nursing school, the professor was nearly four years old. I’ll never forget seeing him hitched up on my husband’s hip in the back of the auditorium as I walked across that stage to get my degree. I wanted to etch the moment into his memory like it was burned into mine. I wanted him to know—this is what hard work looks like, this is what striving for your dreams feels like. I wanted him to know that he could be anything he wanted to be if he set his mind to it.

Of course, he has no recollection of that day, but he’s watched me nurse my butt off for the last eight years. Whether it be giving his Pop diabetes medication or helping a woman seizing in the parking lot, he’s seen me in action and has always acted so proud.

So when he shoved his outstretched thumb into my face as we drove to school one morning, he expected me to have all the answers.

“My thumb hurts really bad, Mom,” he whined, and I inspected it thoroughly once I got to a stoplight.

Redness? A little bit, yes.

Swollen? Nope, not really.

Any cut or wound? No.

Nothing alarming, as far as I was concerned, so I told him, “It doesn’t look like anything serious right now, so we’ll just keep an eye on it, ‘kay?”

He nodded at me, looking a little dejected, and continued inspecting his thumb. I nodded back, feeling sure he probably just had a hang nail or bent his fingernail back during a hard-fought game of four square. The professor’s a pretty active little dude—I’ve had to cut his fingernails just to get the dirt out more times than I care to count. So it’s not farfetched to assume he’d inflicted a little damage that would heal up in no time. Nothing that required medical attention, for sure. It’s an unspoken rule among most nurses that we don’t grace the doors of a doctor’s office, and most definitely not the ER unless a bone is broken, an appendage has been lobbed off, or the bleeding can’t be contained after several attempts. And I mean several.

But that afternoon when I picked up the professor from school, I was reminded of another reason a nurse may knock down the door of a doctor’s office. That reason would be a single red line running up his arm, starting at the thumb that looked completely harmless just that morning. A few hours later, and that sucker was flaming red, swollen, and angry.

“That does not look good, dude,” I told him as I scrolled through my phone for the number to the doctor’s office.

“Nope,” he agreed, looking a little more “I told you so” than I appreciated.

“Wash. Your. Hands,” I chided as I made the call to the doctor’s office. Luckily, they agreed to see us right away. “How many times have I told you to wash your hands. There’s germs everywhere, man.”

The professor being the professor, I was met with a long sigh and a none-too-subtle eye roll. Me being me, I carried on with my hygiene sermon right up until the doctor entered the exam room.

Kids are filthy animals.

You are a kid.

Hence, you are a filthy animal.

Germs are partying like it’s 1999 all over your filthy butt, right now as we speak.

The doctor got right down to business, examining the professor’s thumb and the foreboding red line inching its way up his arm. It terrified me how quickly this situation had spiraled out of control—clearly not a good sign. I waited patiently for the doctor to explain the gravity of the situation to him. I awaited the inevitable lecture about germs, hand hygiene, and the fact that kids were indeed filthy damn animals.

Instead, he angled the professor’s thumb in my direction and pointed to where his fingernail met his nail bed. “You see this right here, Mom?” he asked me, with a smile.

I nodded, a little confused as to where he was going with this.

“His nail is separated from his nail bed, and the reason why is because his fingernails have been cut way too short.”

I thought back to the last time I’d trimmed the professor’s nails … it was just last weekend after he had an “adventure” in the cane field behind our house. His shoes were caked with mud, his face sunburned, and as usual, his nails were basically tattooed with dirt. Like so many times before, I had to clip those suckers clean.

“Okay …” I replied, still not sure where he was going with this.

“So when his nail was cut that short, it allowed the bacteria to enter. That’s how we’ve gotten to this point.”

I nodded my head in understanding, but it took me a hot second to comprehend what he was saying. Did he just … was I the one that …

Oh shit.

Now, the professor may be a filthy animal, but he’s also a smart little thing that’s real quick to catch on. He launched out of his chair in two seconds flat and pointed an accusatory, infected thumb in my direction.

“You! Ha-ha! It’s your fault, not mine!” He barked out a laugh and widened his eyes in amazement, and dare I say, a whole lot of triumph. The fool hollered so loudly, I’d bet that the parents and kids in the neighboring exam rooms heard every word of my horror and humiliation.

My thoughts stuttered and stopped like a discombobulated whirlwind as the word vomit commenced. “But I had to … I didn’t mean to … he was just so dirty!”

As Doc carried on about separated nail beds and antibiotics, a highlight reel of my failure as a mother and a nurse played on repeat in my head. My mom with crossed arms, shaking her head in disappointment … the PTA queens with their tight yoga pants and perfect butts, looking down their surgically engineered noses at me while eating organic, made-from-scratch oatmeal bars … Florence Nightingale, wrestling my stethoscope away from me to beat me senseless with it.

Who was I kidding? I was obviously as senseless as they came since I had just tried to kill my only child—the fruit of my loins—with a pair of nail clippers.

“… Admit to the hospital for IV antibiotics …”

The words screeched through the room like a needle scratching across a record.

“Wait. What did you say? The hospital?”

How in the shit am I going to explain this to my husband?

What in the hell am I going to tell my mom?

What would it take to bribe the professor to keep the origin of this fiasco between the two of us?

Don’t even judge. You can’t know my pain until you’ve walked a mile in my ugly-as-hell-but-damn-comfy Crocs.

“I was only saying that if the high dose antibiotics I’m prescribing don’t turn this around in the next twenty-four hours, then we may have to admit him to the hospital for IV antibiotics. But I’m hoping we can fight this with oral medications. You’ll just have to keep a close eye on him and let us know immediately if his condition isn’t improving.”

“Yes, sir. You don’t need to worry about that,” I assured him, fighting back the tears of embarrassment and defeat.

How could I have let this happen? What am I saying? I didn’t let this happen. I actually caused it. For the love of all that is holy, would I ever get this mom thing right?

Doc must have sensed the internal beatdown I had going on, and he stopped me on the way out of the exam room. He squeezed my shoulder and smiled. “You didn’t starve him. You didn’t slip rat poison into his oatmeal. You were an attentive mom who was just a little overzealous in caring for him. It’s not the same thing.”

I told the truth when we got home that day. I didn’t bribe the professor, but he did get some ice cream while waiting for his antibiotics. It was the least I could do for his trouble. And I watched that damn thumb like it was the most important job in the world.

Because it was.

We still laugh about it.

“Hey, you remember that time you almost killed me with some nail clippers?”

“Ha-ha, laugh it up, you little jerk.”

So would I ever get this mom thing right? No, probably not. I’m going to stumble, trip over my own feet, and fall flat on my face more often than not. And then I’m going to jump back up, laugh it off, and give the professor a big squeeze.

The little jerk.