To Earnest, with Love

I grew up in a dysfunctional home.   Bored yet?  I don't know ANYONE who didn't grow up with some level of dysfunction going on.  I know there are people out there who claim to have had very normal, loving parents and families, but I've never actually met any of them.  The kids next door to me were raised by their grandmother because their mother was an alcoholic and their dad just couldn't be bothered; the kids across the street, their mom died in childbirth with the youngest, who suffered a permanent brain injury during the birth and both were raised by their heartbroken single dad and his mother; my best friend's family was like a whole season of Law and Order - someone was always being arrested, being shot, disappearing, or involved in a serious, drug related accident; another friend's father tried to stick his tongue down my throat in his garage while my friend and her mom, his wife, were inside cooking dinner.  I was 12.  What do you think was going  on