I have been known to say: “Thank you for your input.”
That sounds exhausing. Do you also pull over every bad driver and give them a lecture on using their turn signals/checking their blind spot/not running a stop sign/etc.?
Sometimes people are even wrong on the Internet. Personally, I find these even harder to pass up.
Why stop at people in real life? The greatest challenges lie ahead.
Her husband is “from the US.” Can’t see how to get from there to a green card unless she is completely confused, and if so, arguing isn’t going to help.
Brilliant–I am stealing this! (do I need to give you a footnote?) :p:
At this stage of my life, they usually need to pay me to get me into these sorts of arguments.
Fortunately, they often do.
“They cured your hepatitis C by giving you a series of 3 shots? No, sorry, I’m afraid they didn’t. The tests show you still have it. What they gave you was a series of shots to keep you from getting Hepatitis B on top of the hepatitis C you still do have. No really, here’s your current viral load and everything. No? You think you’re cured? That may not be a helpful belief for you in the long run, but okay, you can go now. We’ll talk again in 4 to 6 months.”
One of my favorite literary quotes:
[QUOTE=Jane Austen]
Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.
[/QUOTE]
Maybe he’s “from the US” in the sense that he grew up there as an illegal immigrant, and applied for permanent residency as an adult. I know quite a few people who have done that, and I don’t know all of the rules, but it can make it very complicated to go back to the home country to visit relatives and the like. If he is a permenent resident applying for citizenship, he needs to be present in the US 30 out of 60 months prior to applying for citizenship, hence the frequent trips back.
Or maybe he is a US citizen who grew up in the US, but moved wherever as a teen. Now he needs 3 years of “US residency” after age 14 in order for his kids to automatically be citizens.
Or maybe (and this is probably pretty likely) he has to go back to the US periodically to renew his visa to wherever he is. It’s often easier to apply for a new visa/visa extension from outside the country than from within. She’s misinterpreting that as “keeping his citizenship” when he really means “keeping his residency in country X”.
People don’t usually say random wrong stuff for no reason, but people often don’t communicate what they are trying to say very well. In most cases it’s probably not worth trying to puzzle out what they were trying to say, but it’s also not helpful to completely sjit them down.
I normally do not, but I have to admit I sometimes can’t help myself when the person making the mistake is a bombastic blowhard. What I really, really enjoy more than I should is asking a blowhard like that questions that push them into a corner. This only works when someone is a very predictable kind of stupid: the loudmouth who is used to being the smartest person he knows because he carefully surrounds himself with idiots. I can’t stand that guy, and will gleefully hoist him on his own petard whenever possible. This is a flaw on my part.
Affects. Now, shall we argue? 
I got sent the the principal’s office for correcting the computer teacher one too many times.
Generally if I’m correcting people I try to be diplomatic, preface the correction with “I think…” or “I’m pretty sure…”, or even “That’s what I thought too, but…”
All good explanations but I also like: Or maybe he’s been lying to his wife about the reason for his trips.
And Grude has screwed it up for him. Now the wife is going to start asking questions.
I avoid correcting people for that reason. I don’t know if I fully understand the context and don’t want to stick my nose into such a mess. Plus, I hate correcting people then finding out I was wrong. That sucks.
THERE. ARE. FOUR. TOLLBOOTHS!
(Yeah, I spent the weekend at a comic books expo. 
)
Haha, no need, you are completely correct.
Any time I correct my mom on anything there’s an argument (unless it’s related to my field or she’s asking for my help), granted the times I do correct her are rare. Unfortunately, this also applies when I’m caught off guard and DON’T correct her.
For instance, my mom pronounces “foliage” as “foilage” which sounds like a term for gratuitous overuse of tinfoil. We got into a conversation about the mountains around here and she said the word “foilage” at some point. I didn’t know what she was talking about and went “… oh, foliage?” And then I got a 5 minute lecture on how I always have to be right. le sigh
Because of THIS place, I argued in length, to a bar full of patrons, that the water in he toilet bowl does NOT spin counter clock wise just because we happen to be in the northern hemisphere.
I fought like a valiant soldier to fight this ignorance to no avail.
What was even more frustrating is that I explained to them the science why it doesn’t work that way.
Their only axiom was: “I’ve always been told that since I was a kid. So it must be true.”
I try to approach situations like that with the assumption that I may be wrong. Probably not, but it comes off much less confrontational when phrased like that. Most of the time I let it slide due to general apathy.
I have been flamed on Youtube for pointing to the indisputable fact, that some Scandinavian names had been misspelled. I didn’t answer the insults thrown at me, though, so it might be said that I didn’t really get into any arguments.
Last summer I had to stop myself. I was on vacation with a friend, and we had this conversation:
Her: Do you know why the sky is blue?
Me: Yeah, it has something to do with how the light scatters.
Her: No, it’s because the sky reflects the ocean and the ocean reflects the sky.
I was about to argue with her, and then wondered if being right was worth ruining a vacation. And she was so proud of herself for knowing that bit of “science” that correcting her would have been akin to calling her a moron.
Me: Really? That’s cool. Hey, how about those lobsters last night?