The people who ran the state children's services would sometimes refer to me or other kids in "the Home" as dysfunctional, which simply meant that they didn't care what provoked our behavior, didn't care that most of us in that place weren't there because of something we had done but because of something our parents had or had not done, but they blamed us anyway.

It meant that their gavel had fallen before they had even learned our names and nothing we did or didn't do would change that. So, the "up yours" we gave them in our different ways was what they called "dysfunctional." I just called it survival.

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