Oh my goodness, I am so stupid. I should just parse the header looking for which column is PPID and use that. 
 ps -l -p $$ | grep PPID | perl -ane '$i=0;
while($i<@F && $F[$i] ne q(PPID)){$i++};
print $i if $i < @F'

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In reply to Re: -n and -p suck up ARGV no matter what by mpersico
in thread -n and -p suck up ARGV no matter what by mpersico

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