Well I figured out why Lightbox 1.5 was not working for me, which is pretty amazing considering how clueless I am

I am running Slideshow 2! on my main page and I had the code for that embedded in includes/templates/template_default/common/tpl_footer.php

Well it seems like Lightbox 1.5 and Slideshow 2! don't play nice together. So I moved the code for Slideshow 2! into includes/languages/english/html_includes/MY TEMPLATE NAME/define_main_page.php and voila everyone's getting along fabulously

Just thought I would post this in case it helps anyone.