Ranking the kooks (and non-kooks, too)

This is a very ranky world, it is. From choosing a frozen pizza to an impossible ranking of all Led Zeppelin songs, lists arranged according to the affinities of one or many abound. As a data and info freak, I quite like that, so it was inevitable that, in my study of my lunatic family, the most important role - parenting - would be addressed.

Ranking parents one is deeply familiar with is easy and interesting. Those one is less familiar with require ample speculation. The criteria are simple:

- How well did they meet the basic obligations?
- How'd their kids turn out?
- How is their relationship, if any, with their grown children?
- How was their demeanor?
- How well did they treat their co-parents?
- What did they do that should not have been done?
- What did they fail to do that should have been done?

I went into this with a rough idea of the landscape. At the end was much understanding and a pleasant surprise. It's worth mentioning that the worst performers on the list still did plenty better than the worst I've seen.

All righty, then...let's go, from worst-est to first-est:

Mutchie
Poor Mutchie was my de facto grandmother, Mom's de facto mother, and pretty much Neila's de facto de facto mother. Yes, the de facto is strong in this one.

I sort of hate to do it, but I must plop her into the worst-est slot.

She was a pretty cool-ass grandmother, bringing rock music, porn, enchiladas, and lobster tails into my young life with some very significant and lasting results. I mostly enjoyed being her grandson.

As a mother, though, she was badly subpar, pulling many sorts of emotional and exploitative chicanery that flat-out fucked up poor Mom's head and drove her up the wall for most of her life.

When Mom was a child she was abandoned, rich people-style, and raised largely by servants. The high-living socialite Mutchie often told Mom she wished she'd never had her, would hide her from potential suitors, and was prone to disturbing tantrums merely if challenged. The heartbreaking stories Mom told me could fill a book.

After coming to the USA, the shyster often ruthlessly exploited my parents, conned them out of money and support, regularly upset Mom terribly, essentially stole Mom's only daughter, and completely disregarded her in death, causing what Mom repeatedly and unequivocally cited as the worst hurt she'd ever suffered.

Mom treasured Mutchie as the last link to her sorely-missed life across the ocean, but the bottom line is that I am unaware of a single notable positive contribution she made to Mom's life. Mom was a remarkable person, impressive in many ways, but also a hot mess who fell way short of her potential and was never truly at peace until death.

Mutchie was responsible for very little, if any, of Mom's goodness and much of her vast dysfunction and, to this day, we remain unsure of who Mom's real father (or mother, for that matter) actually was. Poor Mom - she simply was not raised right.

I got along very well with Mutchie, but from the beginning to the end, she was trouble.

Aydin
The sleazebag Aydin was Mom's first husband and father of my two idiot half-siblings John and Neila.

This fucking guy was a real piece of work. He repeatedly cheated on Mom, the mother of his children, when she wouldn't let him fuck her in the ass and ended up giving her a STD. Before they split, he was an overbearing, smothering prima donna who constantly required inordinate attention and stimulation. This sad excuse for a man rounded out the mind-fucking of Mom that Mutchie (and surely Zsa Zsa) started.

His treatment of their two children was grossly unfair, with daughter Neila treasured and doted upon and son Errol (later changed to John) largely disregarded, a travesty Mutchie also embraced.

Mom overcompensated with a catastrophic bias favoring John for about 50 years before, in yet another illustration of our see-saw of extremes, disowning him forever. That tragically unbalanced bad parenting created monsters in both children, as toxic imbalances tend to do. Those children became badly flawed adults and themselves spawned an avalanche of poor outcomes.

After Aydin followed Mom and Dad to the USA, literally to their neighborhood, not once did he offer to contribute anything to the rearing of his children. He built himself a nice custom home with pool, lived the self-indulgent country club high life that was all-important to him, and later in the decline of old age ran his poor daughter ragged with his self-absorbed need to be perpetually stimulated and catered to, a situation that upset Mom terribly.

As his competency abandoned him and his brain turned to liquid shit, his children, keen on living better than their work ethics and abilities could provide, hellbent on exploiting his resources, and never fond of one another to start with, engaged in a massive legal battle that wreaked havoc on the family and destroyed the latter part of my parents' lives.

Fucking asshole. Fuck that guy. Dad truly disliked him, yet had to swallow it and be nice. Aydin was not fit to suck the sweat from Dad's jockstrap. Like Mutchie, with whom he was close, he was trouble.

John
The boneheaded creep John is my 14-years-older idiot half-brother, son of the above creep Aydin, ex-husband of Kay (and several others), father of Tony and Cindi.

This fucktard extraordinaire was the first in our family to bear crotchfruit after my parents' generation. Tony, a very wanted and treasured child, came first and Cindi, less treasured by John much as his father did with him, followed 15 months later.

As a big brother to me, 14 years my senior, he was a bewildering mixture of a blast and a lunatic. As one would expect, that clearly bled over into his life as a breeder. He adored his first born, a male who was, in his eyes, destined to look and act just like him. His adoration was overly ego-based and far removed from the heavily-selfless love characteristic of truly fine human parenting.

During gestation of number two, a disturbing side of John was revealed. I witnessed him state that if the baby was a girl, he “didn't want anything to do with 'it'.” Never had I heard anyone utter such an abomination and I made it clear to him that the father determines the gender of a child by contributing either an X or Y chromosome to the pair. He scoffed at that, but my 8th grade life science textbook set him straight right-quick-like.

The household was often strained. Like Aydin did with Mom, John smothered Kay, his wife, and children. They had to live his way of life, period. He was overbearing, manipulative, dishonest, and arrogant.

I don't recall his wife having any real interests, hobbies, or friends truly her own - she worked, handed over her paycheck to him, and cared for the family to a disproportionate extent, for he tended to think it was his playtime when he got home from work. He had lots of toys, see.

Following the formula for many unhappy homes, the marriage dissolved after 18 years, long enough for the children to near adulthood. John was, at least according to Mom, a hard worker, but also a compulsive big-shot spender who ran his household into the dirt multiple times. After the divorce my parents had to support both John and Kay to quite substantial extents.

John ended up estranged from both his children. He flicked away his son and grandson as if they were roaches when Tony took a neutral, detached position in the impressively polarized family war centered around Aydin. The estrangement eased after several years, but the matter is unlikely to evolve beyond a strained truce, for Tony is the pilot of his ship now and ain't puttin' up with that shit. Their values are so at odds and the baggage so heavy that a good faith, fondness-based relationship seems forever impossible.

The child with too many X chromosomes is long totally estranged from him, but that flag was waved by her as an adult, not by him as the father of a newborn or pre-born girl. She simply had enough of his silly ass. The XY child turned out to be a good guy and single father after weathering some storms. Both are doing well now.

While not a parental affair, John's conduct with me merits mention since he was much older and had some authority (until I finally told him to go fuck himself) over me. We had a lot of good times, but they were punctuated by a nightmare of, in part, manipulation, teasing, insults, threats, anger, and outright torture.

Somewhere inside arrogant John is a dangerous, insecure madman.

If this guy ain't trouble, there ain't no such fuckin' thing.

Now we leave behind the appallingly flawed souls at the bottom of the heap and engage the much more complex middle stratum.

Zsa Zsa
Mother (or so we've been told) to Mutchie and grandmother to Mom, Zsa Zsa proved challenging to rank here due to a lack of a clear understanding. I never met her, Mom held her in reverence despite also laying on me a cavalcade of stories of a lonely, cold childhood, and I can't recall Mutchie telling a single story about her.

The bottom line is this - both Mom and Mutchie emerged from Zsa Zsa's shadow somewhat fucked in the head. That matters and does not speak well of the lady. I'd love to learn more, but circumstances make that unlikely, to put it mildly.

Neila and Reagan
Neila and Reagan are (or "is," LOL?) my 10-years-older idiot half-sister and her poor husband, so intermorphed and eerily Siamese twin-joined at the hip that I count them as one. Their primary difference is that she, dominant, teeters between squealing, saccharine, forced jollity and outbursts of foul temper while he, weak, is low-key, even-tempered, and pleasant. Never did I see the man get angry in 40+ years I knew him.

Parents of Ryan and Tiffany, they have been loving and dedicated parents, but failed to produce children who were content and productive in timely fashion. One has done much better than the other, but both either are or spent much time as hot messes.

Ryan is the biggest loser I've ever known, sort of The Original Affluenza Teen, and derailed into a bizarre, singular (at least in my rather wide experience) total loss. Tiffany was beset with bad, deep inner pain and bewilderment that long eluded resolution. Neither seemed to really know how to be adults when the time came.

As one regular guest described it, “The place was like (Michael Jackson's) Neverland. Even all these years later I've never seen children so spoiled. It was bizarre and overwhelming. There really is such a thing as too much fun.”

Their intentions were good and their effort substantial, but their actual management of life, and especially money, was poor. As parents and caregivers, they did much, but fell heartbreakingly short due to, in part, a lack of perspicacity. Their flair for becoming entangled in life-grinding faceplants hasn't helped things a whole helluva lot, either.

Poor Ryan was often very candid and interesting to talk to, and, having learned much about the whole bunch of 'em over the last decades, it's fair to state that Neila and Reagan painstakingly destroyed that guy while obviously striving for the opposite. It's a long, sad story.

My heartfelt conversations with Tiffany were also very sad and revealing. Her frustrations with how her parents handled a long list of things were almost overwhelming to her, creating a pressure cooker inside her that proved very challenging to deal with.

Since these matters are far too complex to produce a literal tie, I must rank Reagan a bit above Neila in their rickety parental slog. Reagan has been by far the more sensible and has treated his co-parent much better than Neila has. Never have I seen Reagan treat Neila disrespectfully, but I've seen Neila treat her husband poorly many, many times.

Neila and Reagan have earned their spot at the bottom of the middle, which is a shame, for when I was a child they were of tremendous help and value to me and that will always be treasured and appreciated. In many ways they are good people. They're also trouble. Big trouble.

Mom
Mom was, as one may have guessed, my mother. John and Neila's, too. Charlie's wife and Mutchie's "daughter," She was a brilliant, foolish cyclone of unbalanced conflicts and dysfunction, producing results far below her potential for at least the last 38 years of her life.

Mom was a good mother with many glaring flaws and simply did not function properly. She was definitely not a good wife and badly compromised herself as a family member by continuing to decimate herself with cigarettes and inactivity after two huge health scares and decades of pleas to wise up. Her biggest loves were nicotine, television, and a succession of dogs and she rarely left the house for the last 30 years of her life.

She didn't do regular Mom stuff like attend school events or bring trays of drinks and snacks to us as we played. Hell, she didn't know any of my friends' names. She had a bad temper could be quite verbally abusive to both me and Dad, often calling me very demeaning and vulgar names in both English and Turkish.

Mom's biggest failing was refusing to come to my aid twice when she certainly should have and easily could have, fostering an enormous amount of suffering. Twice, I got thrown to the dogs something brutal when it didn't have to be that way. The consequences continue to hammer us to this moment.

The positive parts of my life with Mom are many, meaningful, and run the gamut from subtle to immense. So are the negative parts, unfortunately. I was not the randy, fantasy Euro-sissy son she's hoped for and she made no bones about showing it. The same applied to Dad, who was a great man, but was not the sophisticated, debonair chap for whom she badly yearned.

She simply wasn't happy here or with us and to this day my heart bleeds for her.

Mom, despite the unique good she brought to the table, was trouble. Big trouble.

Charlie
Charlie was my father and Mom's husband of 50 years. He was a wonderful man, but weak against Mom's overbearing pseudo-might, and that weakness kept him from the top of the list.

Dad was a very hard worker, rock-stable, and a true gentleman, brave, sensible, and strong....except for with Mom. His fealty and spinelessness in dealing with her was tragic in many ways and for many people, including Mom herself.

Mom didn't respect Dad's family, so she smothered him into separation from them. Problem is, they're great people and by depriving Dad of them she also deprived me of them (along with mistreating my father, often right before my eyes), and Dad let it happen. That's not optimal parenting.

Worst for Dad's case, he deferred to perhaps the worst decisions Mom ever made, which resulted in me, as stated above, being thrown to the dogs twice, once as a child in dire need of protection and again as a middle-aged man in dire need what really was modest assistance. The results proved extremely difficult for me and mine.

And now for the champs.......

Tony
Tony is John's son, father of Jax. I have tried to minimize his involvement here due to his wise drive to remain separate from our family drama. We are friends with many common interests.

One word: Wow!

More words: This is so far a nice success story. Yeah, "so far" - ideally, there's many more years to go in his paternal adventure. His co-parent, a troubled soul, is not a significant factor outside of bringing grief to the table.

When his crotchfruit adventure got rolling, I wouldn't have felt comfortable with Tony being responsible for a cactus. To say I was wary of his move to fatherhood would be a spectacular understatement. Dude went through some serious chaos, hit the ground running, fought to get his son, prevailed, and has done a great job while evolving into a good guy.

Few have ever proven me more wrong. The importance of the matter plus his utter decimation of my short-changing of him adds up to the biggest lesson anyone's ever laid on my ass. Few things have made me happier and I'm especially happy for him – it's sweet for even the gentlemanly of us to stand tall and cram an opinionated elder's words back down his throat.

His efforts shine in Jax, an interesting young fellow. He shows an encouraging blend of curiosity, creativity, empathy, kindness, and prudence, and comports himself very well both in school and with other kids. Is he a nightmare to his dad sometimes? Sure. That's OK.

The laundry list of imbalances our family was ravaged by has been decidedly left behind in Tony's enlightened, mindful, non-ego-based approach. I think the chances of his devoted work producing a really fine young man are favorable.

The two of them make a nice pair. This is the best success story in the family and few things in my life have pleased me as much. I can't put him alone at the top of the list quite yet, for the outcome remains to be seen. Now in year 13, so far, quite good, though, and under some very trying circumstances. Let's call him a co-winner, for now.

It must be mentioned that the way Neila, Reagan, and Tiffany courted Jax with a badass birthday party, then did the ol' roach flick trick with him after Tony politely refused to bow down to them is perhaps the most disgusting thing I've seen from Duh Flozzies. In all fairness, though, there have been so many disgusting things that it's a tough call.

Kay
My former sister-in-law, John's ex-wife, Tony and Cindi's mother, Kay has quietly cruised to the top.

Both of her children are doing fine and regard her very highly. No history of estrangement I know of. She was married to a real jackoff for 18 years while mothering her children, making for ample frustration. Still, things turned out well. That about sums it up. Well done.

Plus, there's that whole thing with her being the primary architect of our co-winner an' all.

Mom was generally nice to Kay, but behind her back disliked her, heaving a litany of complaints that centered around a belief that she was not good enough for her Golden Psycho. Having pulled clogs out of drains that I think would make better husbands than John was to Kay, I find that position both dubious and hilarious.

I always liked Kay and thank her for her service to our family.

Tiffany and Langdon
The jury is still out on Tiffany and Langdon, and, as the reader may have figured out, my opportunities to assess them are limited.

Evidence suggests they are pointed in the right direction and despite some troubling behavior from both of them in years past, they have the qualities to be solid parents who love each other and their kiddo dearly. To say I wish them well is an understatement.

Return to Appendices

Ranked: The Parents