Boyfriend and I consider ourselves reasonably intelligent when it comes to language (”reasonably” being a term packed with wiggle room). Combined, we’ve solved Sunday crosswords, aced AP English, won eighth grade spelling bees and written college papers on Nietzsche’s influence on modern literary theorists. Over the course of two beers and a sandwich, he can devise pages of clever copy lines for the latest thriller or comedy poster, while I can recite soliloquies from Hamlet, Macbeth and A Midsummer Nights Dream at will (ah the staying power of a Draconian high school English teacher). Not to mention the fact that I spend my waking hours at a computer spinning words together for a living (or some semblance of one, anyway).

So why, as soon as we start arguing, do all these acquired verbal skills liquefy like rock candy under a heat lamp, until we sound like some sort of bad Nickelodeon pilot that wouldn’t appeal to a caffeinated five-year-old with ADD? Case in point:

B: “Don’t hang that horse picture there. It doesn’t go there.”

Me: “You can’t tell me I can’t put my picture on the wall. I live here too!”

“It doesn’t go there. It should go in the bathroom or something.”

“Oh, but you can have your Jane’s Addiction poster with the naked woman made of stereo parts displayed in the living room? Her vagina is a giant receiver, for God’s sake!”

“That’s a classic poster. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Well…shut up!”

“Make me!”

“You suck.”

“No, you suck.”

“Well – well you’re a butthead!”

“Did you just call me a butthead? You can’t be serious.”

“You are! You’re a total butthead!”

“I cannot believe you just said that. Great comeback. Who says that? Maybe nine-year-olds.”

“Shut up! You’re like seven, if that.”

“Technically, that makes you not even born.”

“Refer back to my earlier comment that you’re a total butthead.”

“Butthead I may be, but the horse picture’s still not going there.”

“Fine. If you find Little Miss Receiver-Cooch accidentally shoved in the back of the closet, don’t complain.”

“Oh really? You would deliberately take my stuff and hide it? Now who’s the butthead?”

“Still you.”