Give me a reasonable explanation for a command, or leave me alone
Exactly! I had terrible trouble in school with the teachers giving me the 'because I said so' line when I balked at obeying senseless instructions. Was there ever a row between you and your sibling over where exactly the middle of the kitchen floor was ?
I'm delighted to be entertaining:) I'm sure my father would be proud of me. One of his lines was 'be anything but a bore'
An interesting question. Gives me pause. Come to think of it, after my two brothers were taken from us (one because he was a paraplegic and the other because he nearly died), we didn't argue much. We had a siege mentality, I think. We lived with impending crises all the time. My mother was not well either (I never mention this--the melodramatic is tedious). She was partially deaf because of chronic mastoiditis, and also had what would eventually be diagnosed as COPD--bad lungs. It's as though we were on precipice. Nobody argued about little things in that environment. We clung together for survival. Only I chafed against her rules, which I sometimes saw as unreasonable. On the whole, I didn't have a stormy adolescence. I agreed with her values (where to go, what to do when I did go) for the most part. It was just the little things.
Isn't this a rough paraphrase of Oscar Wilde? If not exact, surely the phrase captures Wilde's sentiment.
Never fear, dear @deirdyweirdy. Your father would be well pleased in you :)