As my mom walked to her car parked in the driveway earlier this month, the toe of her Ugg slipper got caught in a crack.

She fell on the concrete. She tried to break her fall using her left arm. Her forearm snapped in two. She sat on the driveway in excruciating pain until my sister arrived to take her to the emergency room.

I’ve often heard about the risks of falling for elderly folks. But the statistics from the CDC still surprised me: Falls are the leading cause of injury and injury death for adults over 65. About 36 million falls are reported among older adults each year, resulting in more than 3 million visits to the ER and more than 32,000 preventable deaths.

Until my mom broke her arm, I didn’t realize how life-altering a fall can be for an older person. I certainly hadn’t given much thought to what we could have said or done to try to prevent it. In fact, even though my mom will be 74 in a couple of months, I didn’t think of her as “old.” She’s not the parent who I worry about falling.

She’s been taking care of my dad, who has Parkinson’s and is a cancer survivor, since the pandemic. She teaches Arabic virtually to a group of adult students multiple times a week. She’s social and runs their errands and can cook amazing meals. My mom has a penchant for moving quickly from one task to the next.

She’s older -- but not old, I thought. These days, people in their 70s remain active and engaged, and I expected no different for her.

It would have seemed strange to warn my mom, of all people, to always wear proper shoes when she steps outside. Or to teach her exercises that help with balance and encourage her to do them daily. But now I wish I had said something. Balance tends to worsen as we get older, bones become more brittle, and the winter is the most dangerous time for falls. Women fall more often than men and account for three-quarters of all hip fractures.

When my mom got home from the ER, she reminded me that her mother had broken her hip in her late 80s and died less than a year later. Studies show that a hip fracture dramatically increases an older person’s risk of death. Even a lesser fracture can lead to a loss of mobility and functioning.

As you age, mobility equals independence.

Here are some of the risk factors that increase one’s chances of suffering a fall, according to the CDC:

-- Lower body weakness

-- Vitamin D deficiency

-- Difficulties with walking and balance

-- Use of medicines, such as tranquilizers, sedatives or antidepressants. Even some over-the-counter medicines can affect balance.

-- Vision problems

-- Foot pain or poor footwear

-- Home hazards or dangers such as broken or uneven stairs, and throw rugs or clutter that can be tripped over.

My mom underwent a three-hour surgery to repair her arm. When I saw the X-rays of her bionic arm, it looked like surgeons had installed an entire Home Depot shelf in there. She will need to be in a cast for a couple of months. It will likely take months of physical therapy to restore her upper body strength. In the meantime, my siblings are helping out and looking for home health workers who can come assist my parents. I hate that my mom has suffered so much needless pain and that her life will be upended until she’s completely healed.

We can be slow to change habits until an injury forces our hand.

I’ve learned to slow down when rushing down the stairs, to use hiking sticks when attempting a steep trail, to incorporate more balance exercises in my workouts and to pay more attention to the sidewalks when walking our dog. I regret not surveying my parents’ home and habits more carefully when I visited them last.

We’ve learned the hard way -- a fall can change everything.

Ron Sanford reads the daily newspaper every morning -- a habit of more than 40 years. I occasionally hear from him when he’s heated.

Sanford, 65, a retired computer science teacher in St. Charles County, Missouri, has accused me of having an agenda when I’ve written about school boards or book bans in the past. I usually reply to his emails, as I do with local readers whenever possible. The tone of many of his messages led me to believe he’s one of my “hate-readers” -- the ones who only read because they want something to criticize.

In this day and age of dwindling print subscribers, I’ll take it.

Last spring, however, I wrote something that really touched a nerve with Sanford. I was describing a situation in which my husband and I had gotten turned around in an unfamiliar neighborhood in St. Charles at night. It was shortly after two young people, one in Kansas City and one in upstate New York, had been shot by strangers simply for mistakenly knocking on their door or pulling into their driveway. At the time, I told my husband to be careful since we were in a “shoot-first” part of Missouri.

This description did not sit well with Sanford. He wrote to say that St. Charles County had lower rates of people getting shot than the city of St. Louis. He said it revealed my bias that I would describe the county that way, but not the city. (He used more emphatic language, but you get the idea.)

At first, I tried to describe what I had meant. The column was about where individuals feel safe, and a few weeks prior to writing it, I had read about signs from a white nationalist group popping up in St. Charles County. In such a deep red county, it’s also reasonable to expect a higher rate of gun ownership.

Perhaps an unknown person of color pulling into a stranger’s driveway in such an area would be viewed suspiciously. That was the context of my feeling unsafe in that situation.

Sanford insisted that my feelings did not justify the "shoot-first" descriptor. He pointed out there was scant evidence to suggest that I would be shot, and said I needed to publicly apologize. I considered his point of view and realized it was, indeed, a glib and unfair remark about St. Charles County.

I asked if I could call him and possibly write about our exchange. He reluctantly agreed.

I was curious about a few things. First of all, what was driving his dogged persistence in writing to me about this phrase? We had exchanged emails over several months by this point.

He admitted that being retired gave him ample time to send emails.

“I like getting emails because it’s something for me to do,” he said. That’s the opposite of how I feel about my overrun inbox, which I’m constantly triaging.

We did discover some unexpected common ground. He described himself as a moderate, politically speaking.

“I don’t like Trump or Biden, if that matters,” he said. Judging by the polls and approval ratings, the majority of the country feels the same way. When I asked about his top three issues going into this election, he said the economy, border security and, surprisingly, abortion.

“I have daughters,” he said. “Some of these laws being passed are insane.”

I didn’t expect to hear that.

Even more surprising, he said that he probably agrees with more of what I write than he disagrees with. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

We’ve become accustomed to making assumptions about people based on tweets, social media posts or brief interactions. Those who disagree on the most divisive issues tend to see each other as one-dimensional. But most people are more complicated. We just hear the loudest, least-nuanced voices most frequently.

Another reason I wanted to talk to Sanford is because I’ve been grappling with how our discourse around political disagreement in this country has devolved. I’ve talked to my children about how to disagree without being disagreeable, but maybe it’s better to model that behavior. In an election year that’s bound to be highly contentious and polarizing, I wanted to show them another way to talk about our differences.

“In general, I wish people who disagree with each other would talk more, like we are doing right now,” Sanford said during our phone call.

Maybe our conversation felt productive because I was willing to engage and admit that I was wrong on a point Sanford deeply cared about. It probably helped that his tone was much friendlier over the phone than in his emails. We got to know a little more about each other’s backgrounds and perspectives, and discovered areas of agreement. He trusted me enough to talk to me, even knowing I would be writing about it.

Before we ended the call, he said that his previous demands for a public apology had been “crossing the line.”

I recognized it as an olive branch, and I appreciated it.

For the record, I publicly apologize.

School board members waging a culture war in a large suburban district are due for a lesson in the Streisand effect.

The phenomenon is named after the iconic actress, singer and director Barbra Streisand, one of the few entertainers who has won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award. But one part of her legacy has nothing to do with her immense talent.

In 2003, Babs sued a photographer and website for violating her privacy by publishing an aerial photo that included an image of her mansion. The picture was one of 12,000 photographs publicly available as part of the California Coastal Records Project. Her lawsuit was eventually dismissed, and Streisand had to pay the photographer's legal fees. The upshot was that the photo in dispute had been downloaded only six times prior to the lawsuit's filing -- but after it made headlines, more than 420,000 people visited the website.

That backfiring -- drawing even more attention to whatever you are trying to hide or censor -- became known as the Streisand effect. And now, a St. Louis-area school board is getting a taste of it.

Last month, the conservative majority on the Francis Howell school board -- the governing body for one of the largest school districts in Missouri -- voted to eliminate the elective Black History and Black Literature courses from the district’s three high schools.

The move prompted national headlines, like this one from the Associated Press: "Missouri school board that previously rescinded anti-racism resolution drops Black history classes."

Not a great look for the district, where just 8% of the student body is Black.

Post-Dispatch reporter Blythe Bernhard wrote that, last semester, there were 60 students taking Black History and 42 taking Black Literature across the three high schools. After the board removed the classes, more than 3,350 people signed a student-led petition calling on the district to reinstate them. A large group of students and teachers also wore black in protest.

Students could drive home the Streisand effect by signing up en masse for these classes when they are offered again. They may want to see for themselves what the conservative members of the all-white board find so objectionable in the teaching of Black history and literature.

Those courses were developed in the 2020-2021 school year. Teachers, administrators, the curriculum advisory council and the academic strategic planning committee reviewed them before gaining board approval. That was before members like Randy Cook, who said he campaigned on eliminating the courses, won seats on the board. The political action committee that supported the conservative takeover of the board had targeted the Black history and literature classes partly because the curriculum standards were developed by the civil rights group Southern Poverty Law Center. Board members Cook, Adam Bertrand, Jane Puszkar, Mark Ponder and Ron Harmon voted in favor of cutting the courses, and Janet Stiglich and Chad Lange were opposed.

Cook, the board’s vice president, said that he is opposed to teaching Black history and literature “through a social justice framework.”

The National Association of Social Workers defines social justice as the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities. What’s so objectionable about equal rights and equitable opportunities for all -- especially for those who were denied such opportunities for much of our country’s history?

After facing backlash from students, teachers and the national press, the board backpedaled its decision. They are willing to reinstate the courses after approving a new curriculum “that is rigorous and largely politically neutral,” according to Bertrand, one of five conservatives who gained a majority on the board in the last two years.

Is it “politically neutral” to acknowledge that hundreds of years of slavery and segregation were a central part of American history and help explain why racial inequities persist to this day?

I guess that remains to be seen.

Keep in mind, this is the same school board that, last summer, rescinded the district’s 2020 anti-racism resolution -- a statement that “pledges to our learning community that we will speak firmly against any racism, discrimination, and senseless violence against people regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, immigration status, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or ability.”

The AP reported that Cook defended rescinding the resolution, saying, “We just need to stick to the business of educating students here, and stay out of the national politics.”

In literature, that is called irony.