"So how did you break your wrist?"

"Wrestling a bear."
"Misjudging a back flip."
"Losing on ‘Fear Factor."
"Outrunning the paparazzi."
"Skateboarding on a half pipe."
Who am I kidding? I’m a mom with three kids - all sprinting toward adulthood.
"So how did you break your arm?"
"Missing the second step"
"Slipping in the bathtub"
"Walking to the mailbox."
"Over reaching on the step ladder."
"Shoveling the sidewalk."

How did I get this old!?!

My son broke his leg, when he was six years old, and he doesn’t remember it hurting. I broke my wrist and took a terrifying trip down the road of anxiety, panic, depression and pity in a matter if seconds. I don’t remember my son, Steven, screaming at the doctor, "Don’t you have anything stronger?" I hold my cast in my good arm like a newborn baby. If anyone approaches me, I instinctively retreat. Steven used to hit his full leg cast with sticks as he swung on the swing set. His only return to the doctor was to get a dropped Lego retrieved.

I’ve never even given a second thought to playing on the teeter totter.

I credit myself with a determination to "find the funny" even as friends and family give me that "Oh, she must be losing bone mass" smile.

I stood in the icy vacant fenced parking lot at 7:30 on a frigid Sunday morning surrounded by my four mixed breed dogs, and thought to myself, "I broke my arm. … I’m O.K. … At least it wasn’t a shark attack."… "Or maybe it wasn't a shark attack!"

Sally Edwards is a professional key note speaker, corporate humorist and standup comedienne who began her career studying improvisation at Chicago’s Second City. Sally has been featured on Showtime’s Comedy Club Network, A&E and NBC TV’s Friday Night. Sally is now a frequent guest on WGN Radio with Steve Cochran.