What Peaceful Families Fight About

I thought you might want to know what we fight about at this house.

What a real pillow is: Matt prefers to sleep on a pillowcase with three feathers in it. I like a mountain of fluffy goodness. So for 22 years he says, Hand me my pillow. And I say, Pillow? Oh, you mean this empty piece of fabric? Then it’s a brawl.
We have these black fabric covers that go on the arms of the black recliner, or what Caleb, my 15-year-old, refers to as “The Black Chair of Destiny”. When he gets up, the fabric arm covers are all askew or are lying on the floor. I tell him to pick them up and put them back on nice. He says, Why do we have these! I yell (with straight face), They’re important. Put them back on! They’re extremely important, Caleb! (And I would throw them away, except then what would we fight about.)
There is a metal trivet in the kitchen drawer, and every time we set the table I ask my husband to get out the trivet. He says, You mean the hot food thing? I say, No, the TRIVET. Every time he calls it something different. On purpose. To start an argument.
And then there’s my daughter. I hate to speak ill of her when she’s away at college, but she has a beef about microwave numbers being cleared. She acts passive aggressive and just walks over there and clears them, but we know on the inside she wants to argue about why anyone would stop the microwave before the time is up.
Most weeks my husband and I argue about flossing, but we do this in the bedroom, because we don’t want to air all our dirty laundry in front of the children. I say floss first, then brush the loose stuff out. He says brush first, floss second. I am right. But we bicker about this again and again.