There's no such thing

What are the attributes of a "functional" family? Kindness, caring, genuine concern for one another, teamwork, honesty, integrity? What about putting the toilet seat down and rinsing out the sink after you're done brushing your teeth? Does it only take one kooky member of the family to make the whole family dysfunctional? When the rest of the family revolves around one member is that dysfunction? Who makes the rules? Who writes the list of what function and dysfunction is? Does that person have a family and is it dysfunctional?
Every family is at least a little functional and a little dysfunctional. Some are more functional than others. But I believe that each family has it's own dysfunction. My family got a sprinkling of the dysfunction. My best girl friend got a truck load full of it. I can still smell the rot of her house. Her room was the only clean, bright, organized room in the house. When she shut the door the stench didn't come in as much. I see the holes in the floor of her living room. She was paper thin, controlling the only aspect of her life she thought she could. She let me come into her house, she trusted me. She tried to hide at my house one time but I didn't see it that way. Now that I'm older, I see it for what it really was.
I didn't see the constant sores on her knuckles, smell the acid on her breath or even get that she was sick. My world at 15 didn't see or even know about those things. Her world was those things. Which one of us lived in reality? Her mother, father, sisters and brother helped creater her reality, as did mine. I couldn't or maybe wouldn't see the bad things in life. My slightly dysfunctional family helped me be that way. Was it better? I got to play with dolls and kittens at the age of seven and my friend was busy worrying if she would have to worry about rodents in her bed. That's not fair or even right. But that's reality and you get what you get.