Silliest argument nearly resulting in divorce.

In My Humble Opinion
1

The “gender semantics” thread got me thinking about this. What is the stupidest, silliest, most insignificant thing you and your spouse, significant other, or even good friend have ever gone ballistic over?

When our kids were littler, I had a permanent soundtrack of Raffi tunes running through my head 24/7. One of his songs goes:

I like to eat, Ay-ples and ba-nay-nays,
… Ee-ples and ba-nee-nees,
… etc. through i o u.

Yes, this is high art we are talking about.

So, one day as we were making dinner, in a frivolous mood I decide to make some pleasant, lightweight conversation by observing,
You know, to be entirely correct, he should say “Ay-payls, and Ee-peels,” because every consonant has to have a vowel sound, so the second syllable of apple should have the same long a sound as the first."

Now, I was just shooting the shit, and didn’t really care one way or the other, but Mrs D sinks her teeth into it and insists not all syllables require a vowel sound. I maintain that the second syllable of apple has some kind of vowel sound, maybe one of those upside-down e-thingies or something, and I require some authority to the contrary other than her belief, however strong. This for some reason infuruates her. Over the following hours objects are thrown, a window is broken, and one of us nearly moves out of the house before we find an acceptable source for the existence of such a thing as a syllabic consonant.

At the time we had been married about 5 years, in two weeks it will have been 16.

Can you top that?

2

I’m sure I have one but I can’t think of one right now.

I had to say, though, that your story is hilarious!

3

No. I honestly can’t. That’s one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time.

I did recently get in a stupid argument with my wife, though we stopped well short of dividing up the property. My wife was telling me about a guy who is lobbying to get Pluto “delisted” as a planet because it apparently doesn’t conform to the rules of the other planets. I, for some reason, decided to debate this despite my near total ignorance of astronomy. She had several fairly compelling facts from the article she read. I had nothing, but refused to concede. Jesus, she got mad.

4

Ah,** Zoff**, I like the cut of your jib.
There is nothing quite so pure as arguing strenously from a position of abject ignorance.

If you asked my wife, her “favorite” example would probably be when her friend got pissed off at me and called me “tedious”, which I attempted to disprove by pulling out the dictionary and arguing the precise definition of the word.

Yes, yet another example of why 2 lawyers should not breed. Our kiddies have NO chance.

5

My wife (then girlfriend) were both sent to Portland, Or. on business. We spent the evening walking around downtown portland, then headed back to the hotel. We knew the address of the hotel, which was something like 1600 X street, where X is some street name and for some random value of 1600.

long, boring treatise on street signs follows:

Now, in los angeles, the street signs work thusly. If you are travelling on, say, Able street, and you cross Baker street, there will be a sign suspended above Able Street saying <- 100 Baker 200 ->, meaning that if you take a left, you’ll be on the 100 block of Baker, and if you make a right, you’ll be on the 200 block of Baker. You have no idea what part of Able street you are on. In this section of Portland, the street signs work the opposite - there will be a sign saying “Able 200”, meaning you are entering the 200 block of Able street, and you have to look at the Baker sign to figure out what part of Baker you’d be on if you turned. Yes, it has been 5 years, and yes, I still remember this.

So, we start walking to the hotel. She says something to the effect of “Well, the hotel is at 1600, and we’re on the 400 block. We have twelve blocks to go”. I helpfully point out that the street signs work differently. She says that’s how all signs work. I suggest that we’ve been on the 400 block for a long time, then. We walk another block, and, in an effort to be nothing but helpful and courtesous, point out that she’s wrong. She then says “You just can’t admit when your wrong, can you?”. I then proceed to point out every single street sign proving my point. Things managed to go down hill from there. By the time we were back at the hotel, we weren’t speaking. That actually last until we got on the plane the next morning.

I still think the important lesson here is, I was right.

6

Well, let it never be said that I am unwilling to suffer for my art.

You are master. I am merely grasshopper.

But the real purpose to this post is to announce that my wife has officially endorsed the Pluto argument as the stupidest one we’ve ever had.

7

Damn, bashere, I loved that.

It’s a wonderful feeling, isn’t it, when you are certain that you are correct and your partner is entirely mistaken, but you know that to point out that fact will piss them off to no end. So you are torn between attempting polite and ignorant inquiry vs saying, “WTF, I’m gonna get my head torn off anyways. Might as well get a good zinger in first.” Especially lovely when you choose the “zinger”-scorched battlefields approach, and it ultimately ends up you were the one who was mistaken.

Wonderful to come into the office first thing in the a.m. and get as good a giggle as that.

And the fool woman still married you after that? I’d say you successfully made full disclosure before the fact, and are entitled to essentially unlimited assholiness during the course of your wedded bliss (however long it may last!)

8

I had to read this a couple of times before I realized it was a typo and you did not have the problem of your wife and your girlfriend running into each other. That would have been a whole other argument.

9

Comes from a good ol’ Southern boy marrying a Yankee. We’d been married, oh, about 2 months. I was going home for a week-long vacation. I got a call from a guy I had been friends with -and- had had a one-night-stand with in college. We chatted, and agreed to meet while I was up in his neck of the woods. When I got off the phone, the conversation with Mr. Kitty went like this:

Mr. Kitty: Who was that?
Me: Oh, X. You remember me mentioning him.
Mr. Kitty: Yeah. What did he want?
Me: He’d heard I would be visiting, and thought we could meet up while I was there.
Mr. Kitty: (who is getting increasingly annoyed) And what did you plan on doing when you met up?
Me: Probably hot-tubbing, hanging out, you know.

Mr Kitty didn’t talk to me for almost a full day and I couldn’t figure out why.

Now, I went to school in Western Massachusetts. Winters are cold, unlike here. There was a place where all the college kids would go, it was kinda like a bar with hot tubs. You’d reserve a room with a hot tub, hang out, drink, have some snacks, run out in the snow and roll around, run back into the tub, repeat. :smiley: It was great fun, and fully on the up-and-up. Health Department certified, cameras in the rooms to prevent naughty things, and clothing required at all times. That’s what hot tubbing meant to me.

Note to self: Hot tubbing does NOT mean the same thing in Georgia, and CERTAINLY does not mean the same thing to a very annoyed, threatened Mr. Kitty.

Damn marriage was almost over before it began. But I’m pleased to say we’re celebrating our five year anniversary of our first date today. :slight_smile:

-BK

10

My then-girlfriend and I. Sorry about that. Big difference. Much more amusing story the way the typo implies.

This isn’t an argument, but it sums up how my marriage works. We worked together when we first met, so we took things really really really slowly at first; we started by just hanging out. Over beers, she said that if we were to start dating, we’d date for a year, then she’d have to kill me - because I’d be right all the time, and that would drive her nuts. Needless to say, I teased her about saying that for a long time.

Now, when I point out I’m right about something, she will respond “And you know where that’ll get you, right?”

::Shrug:: Works for us. And I keep my mouth shut a lot.

Except, perhaps, about street signs.

11

I’ve learned to just keep my mouth shut. And I’ve only been married a little over a month, after having been single and independent for 10 years.
I have to literally bite my tongue. The SO will ask my opinion on something, maybe the way it could be done or if he should do it, etc. In the beginning I offered an opinion. Didn’t take long for me to learn that giving an opinion is not what he wants, he just wants to have me listen to him. Finally I told him, ‘giving you an opinion is just like pissing in the wind’ all it does is blow back on you. Of course he was immediately offended. A couple of days later, he proved my point by asking my opinion and then doing the total opposite; at which time I pointed it out to him what I meant when I said pissing in the wind. Of course he just looked at me and didn’t say a word but we both knew it was the truth. I love to be right, too.

12

I’m just comming off one of these arguments with Ms. QS. The incident was over her cell phone which she has a habit of misplacing.

While on a short trip out of town she put the cell phone into the center console of our rental car. I noticed the phone there and put it back in the back pack notifying her of as much. Later that day she proceeded to make another telephone call and put it back in the console. I did not notice this time. Anyway, we return the car the next day and hop on the plane home. Next day she comes to the realization that the phone is gone and asks me if I’d seen it. I ask her where she had it last and she admits to leaving it in the car console. I give her the knowing look of, “Didn’t I suggest you keep it in the backback?!” Which I regret almost before I’m done making eye contact. She proceeds to chew me out on how she would never have forgotten it in the car if I hadn’t put it back in the backpack the first place. I laugh at the absurdity of her logic but she’ll have none of that. Finally she stomps off in a huff.

Fortunately the nice folks at Avis found the phone and sent it back to us. But the most fortunate outcome of this is the unlimited mileage I’ll get from me being right and her being wrong - 'cuz it does not happen often.

13

It’s times like this that I’m glad I live in Chicago, a city with a logical grid system. Just a nice East/West, North/South grid. Very few angled streets, and they still fit into theg grid. makes it obscenely easy to find your way.

14

Are you sure she didn’t mistake it for the look of, “Nice move, dumb ass!”

15

Dinsdale-
Your story was the funniest thing I’ve heard in a
long time! Unfortunately, though, I know the song
in question and now its stuck in my head!