Inspired by this thread, air out your stupidest family arguments here!
Dread Pirate Jimbo and I have pretty much agreed to stop “discussing” which captain was better, Captain Picard or Captain Kirk. He’s a Kirk man, but I married him anyway. 
Well, you know my main one (Baskin-Robbins vs. Dairy Queen: Which is Classier?), but we also have one about IKEA; he hates IKEA stuff, which I unfortunately did not know until 2 days before our wedding (by which time I felt it was too late to turn back). 
I got a pretty stupid one here too, it’s only been going on for about, oh, four years.
I say that the Fat Boy Slim song Rockafeller Skank contains the line, “Funk Soul Brother”, while my husband insists that it’s saying “The Funk’s Your Brother.”
You’d think we’d stop talking about it after all this time, but at least once a month, he brings it up as an example of how my opinions are not to be trusted … which I think is ironic, because I use the same argument, just in reverse. (-:
Heather
Well, I’ve posted this one before, but here goes…
A kids’ singer named Raffi has a song called “Apples and Bananas.” It goes:
I’d like to eat, eat, eat, AY-ples and BAY-NAY-NAs
(Repeat)
… EE-ples and BEE-NEE-NEEs…
etc. thru AEIOU.
Well, one evening the missus and I are fixing dinner, and I just decide to initiate a little light conversation. So I playfully say, "You know, to be accurate and consistent, Raffi should say he likes to eat AY-PAYls and EE-PEEls, because every syllable has to have a vowel sound. So he should replace the vowel sound in the second syllable of apple with AEIOU.
The sweet Ms. D. disagrees, contending that there you certainly CAN have a syllable without a vowel sound, and that the second syl of apple is a perfect example.
Did I mention that we are both lawyers?
Suffice it to say that before the matter was resolved, a heavy object had flown past my head and through the (previously closed) front window. I seriously thought divorce was a possibility as various points that evening.
Oh yeah - after consulting various dictionaries, grammar and usage books, we found documentation that she was right. Something called a syllabic consonant…
Since then, I have little difficulty resisting the urge to make pleasant conversation. Don’t mind a little silence. The current one in our home has been going on 10 years now …
Well, we have this thing about whose family is worse - his “cold and distant” family or my “crazy and loud” family.
I think mine - after all, I do have an uncle who has been married to two of my father’s sisters - but his has its merits too.
Also, we ALWAYS fight over the volume of the radio. Why does he only want to “talk” when we’re in the car and Pearl Jam is on?
Stupid things we used to argue over (before divorcing)
white bread or wheat bread. I like white. He likes wheat. He claims that white is bleached and is therefore bad for you. This comes from someone who is an alcoholic and drug user.
Which way the toilet paper hangs. I say it hangs from underneath. He claims it hangs from above. His claim was you use too much toilet paper if you hang it my way. This comes from someone who would waste the heels of the bread.
Does the toilet seat belong up or down? I say down. He said up. He claims it took less time and energy for me to put it down then for him to put up.
He says you can NOT eat spaghetti without having a salad. He refused to eat any type of macaroni without a salad. One time there wasn’t any lettuce so he ran to Mcdonalds to get his stink’n salad.
I’m so glad we are divorced.
When I was eight years old and my sister was five, she was supposed to be pushing me down the slide in our back yard. I don’t know why- it’s not like I couldn’t get down the thing under my own steam. But, she wanted to push me, so I let her. She wound up pushing me off the slide instead, and I broke my arm. If I really want to pick a fight with her, I mention the time that she pushed me off the slide and broke my arm, and she gets completely pissed off and irrational, claiming that she pushed down but I was clumsy and fell to the side, and my grievious injury was not her fault. Oh, and did I mention that I am now 42 and she’s 39?
My husband and I also argue over the volume of the TV (although I don't think it's stupid because it's ALWAYS too loud). I can't believe that he needs to have the volume on 35 just to watch some of the glurge that he watches on TV. And it drives him nuts that, if there is a M*A*S*H rerun being televised anywhere in the free world, I will a) find it, and b) watch it. At a nice, respectable volume of 25 or so. "I can't believe you're watching that again! How many times have you seen this? Isn't there something else on?" I'm sure there is, on the TV in the bedroom.featherlou and Auntie Em it is only fair that we know which side you fall on in the above mentioned arguments. For instance it is clear that Picard is better in all respects and Baskin Robbins is classier. If I don’t know on which side of the debate you are I don’t know to whom I should assign credit.
Well, I have a long standing argument with my younger brother over the meaning of the Japanese word “Kawaii” - he thinks it means cool or awesome, while of course it actually is used to refer to cutesy type things. This is despite my showing him several Japanese-English dictionaries, as well as him actually living in Japan for a year now.
Fruitbat, I was reluctant to post my POV until I had gotten more replies, so as not to seem like I was attempting to sway any opinions.
But yes, I’m the one in the Baskin-Robbins camp.
Actually, though, the argument is not exactly about which ice cream establisment is classier, it was kind of the opposite–it’s about which is, as my darling SO likes to put it, more “Low Rent”.
I don’t even remember how it started. I remember that we’d already been to (and enjoyed) the DQ around the corner from my house several times, and that I mentioned something about BR. I don’t remember if I was expressing a desire to go there, or if I was merely expressing my eternal devotion to their Pink Bubblegum ice cream, or what. I just remember the SO cocking his little eyebrow and saying, “Baskin-Robbins? That’s so Low Rent.”
So of course I felt compelled to point out the Pot/Kettle irony of a Dairy Queen lover calling Baskin-Robbins “Low Rent”.
And that’s when the argument began.
It is not yet over.
I think for him it has something to do with the fact that BR (at least the one around here) does not have soft-serve.
When I was learning to drive, I was driving the whole family into Annapolis and we came to an intersection where I needed to make a right turn. There’s a light, but also a right turn lane with a yield sign. I came barrelling up to the intersection and started around the corner, while my dad sat next to me softly telling me to slow down… slow down… look for traffic…
YIELD, DAMMIT!
[insert sound of squealing brakes and terrified gasps from the back seat]
In the car were my father, mother, and younger brother. We all remember the incident, including the car (an old Volvo station wagon) and the intersection (Maryland 450 and 178), but for 13 years we have been unable to agree on the direction we were coming from and the direction we were turning.
With 4 people, you’d expect 3 to be right and 1 to stubbornly insist on a different story, right? But my mother and I have been pitted against my dad and my brother on this for years, and we will be until they admit that they’re wrong.
Stupidest family argument THAT I WON:
At a sushi restaurant, my mother asked, “Is wasabi different than horseradish?” (She loves the stuff, by the way.)
Dad says, “Yep. Absolutely. Same plant.”
I said, “Dad, you’re wrong, it’s a completely different plant.” I had just read an article about how difficult it is to grow the stuff and how its cultivation is a closely-guarded industry secret.
Fierce but good-natured argument ensues. I should mention that my dad is a career reference librarian who I have frequently suspected of asserting as certain fact, at least at home, things he only thinks might be right because he vaguely remembers something about it that he might have read at some point. I mention this in passing in the argument. Dad denies the charges and claims libel. The sushi and even the green-tea ice cream is all eaten, and still the battle rages.
Mom declares that she will be sure Dad gets back to me with the answer, no matter who is correct. She has her suspicions about his certitudes, too.
Weeks pass. (I’m a grownup at the time and they had been visiting my city; they’ve gone back home.)
Finally, the call: Mom announces, with tremendous glee, “Your father has something to tell you!”
Never has satisfaction been so sweet. “Wasabi” is now a loaded term.
Who was in what movie. A continuous argument, which invariably begins at 11:30 pm, right as we are going to sleep, to be continued into the next day, and has occasionally dragged our children, my mother, my brother, and his sister along with us. I almost invariably end up:
a.) looking it up on the internet and showing him (quite annoying at 1:30 in the flippin morning, but whaddayagonnado?)
b.) calling above mentioned relatives and getting THEIR opinion
c.) RARELY admitting, (dammit) “ya know, babe, I think you may be right. John Wayne didn’t shoot ANYBODY in Donovan’s Reef.” (In which we argued: was there a single movie in which John Wayne didn’t shoot anyone?..Please…spare me, we’ve done it to death, and YES, I know about The Quiet Man.)
The correct pronunciation of the word “flaccid” (me and my dad; I won, but he still maintains that it sounds too pretentious when pronounced properly, so he claims a moral victory).
Whether the stove should be scrubbed down after every thing that is cooked on it, or if it should be a “once weekly” kind of chore.
Whether the throw pillows in the living room are ugly or the height of class and sophistication.
Where to set the AC.
Ivylad would crank it down to 65 every night if I let him…I’m happy with it about 75-76, which he say is too hot.
Check my OP - I married Jim in spite of his assertions that Capt. Kirk is THE MAN. Guess which side I’m on? 
Oh, did I mention our ongoing “discussion” about the location of crosswalks? I read somewhere long ago and far away that a crosswalk extends across the road from the end of every sidewalk. Jim asserts that crosswalks exist only where specifically noted as “crosswalk” with a sign and painted lines and all. I think this could be a regional thing - I learned to drive in Sask, he learned to drive in Ontario, and we’re now living in Alberta. We’re probably both wrong on this one.
My husband and I got into a very loud-- we call it “discussion”, the kids call it “fight”-- over which direction the hair whorles on my son’s head went.
My son posts here. Maybe he could tell you about it.
All I have to say is that any captain who would let Wesley Crusher fly his ship is clearly inferior to every other captain in Starfleet. Kirk would’ve shot Wesley as a threat to Intergalactic Peace.
That is all.
My parents once got into a very loud, angry argument over where the Mason/Dixon line was–116 years after the Civil War ended. Who even cares now? They can have civil discussions on issues like abortion but blow their stacks over trivia.
You see what I have to put up with?
Although I do agree that Picard should have been allowed to confine Wesley to quarters the first time he showed up on the Bridge - I blame the writers.