Can you hear me now?

I know they hear me! I know it! They just pretend they don't, who? teenagers. Won't listen to a word I say, clean your room, stop doing that, let the dog out, do the dishes. Why do I have to repeat these things over and over and over? But, say I'll probably be able to take you to Game Stop next week. It is as if it's written in stone. Then I hear, "but you said", "when are we going", will you help me buy this or that, can I look on the computer to see how much it costs. I say, "when are the dishes going to be done?", here comes every parents favorite word. "LATER", can't I do it later?, then he goes to bed. Hmm? He's snoring away and the dishes are stacked to the ceiling. Nope, I'm not going to do them, I refuse, the next day the stack gets higher. As he jumps off the bus, mom, "when are we going to Game Stop". UGH, I say when are you doing the dishes, "LATER", ok, no stop. Now my "nerves are a million" as my best friend likes to say. But he wants to know when we are going to Game Stop. Grandma gave him $10 he must spend it! Everyone knows there is NOTHING at Game Stop for $10. It's obvious I'm going to have to "help" pay for it. I'll do anything, if he'll just wash the dishes, that now are over flowing everywhere, flies are swooping down around my head, comicazi bugs are flying everywhere. I swear to myself, I will not do the dishes! We can't eat cuz there's not a dish to eat off of. The Boy wants to know when I'm going to cook dinner again, we are very much sandwich people. But I refuse to cook "real food" if there is not a real plate to eat off. I have taken to using paper plates, a teen age boy's idea of clean dishes and mine differ quite a bit! Once upon a time when he was about 7 he decided that if a dish got broken, then he'd get out of the dishes somehow. The boy managed to break about 14 dishes before I caught on to his motives. Then I made him buy new dishes with his allowance money. Money he has to earn, by what? By doing the dishes! I have stopped going behind him and re-washing them. It's only me and my 14 year old son. I don't eat off of dishes. There are never any clean. But if they are "clean" there's greasy stuck on stuff I can't identify on them, and honestly I'm afraid of what food borne illness I'm about to be telling the emergency room doctor about next.

 
Why is it that I can be having a conversation with a friend, across the room, whispering, and the boy can hear every detail of what I said, but when I yell "let the dog out" in his face, he can't hear a thing? 
I went out of town for 2 days. I simply can not see everybody in 2 days, less really when you consider sleep time. I can't help it, when I go back home I'm so popular, why didn't anyone want to see me when I lived there?
But I saw who I could and had a great time, chatting it up with my best girlfriends, and then I come home.

It was a good trip, when we got home life hadn't skipped a beat...  "mom, when are we going to the store, but you said......" I say, "but you said.... you'd do the dishes..." 

Come on the whole reason I had a kid was so I wouldn't have to do the dishes anymore, it would have been cheaper just to buy a dishwasher, but a dishwasher can't hug me like my son can, so I'm sure I'll end up taking him to the store and "helping" him, and I'm sure the dishes will quickly stack back up again.  But, ya gotta love him.  Thought I'd buy a dishwasher but I have nightmares of hearing, "why didn't you put the dishes in the dishwasher?"