It's a matter of not understanding

Strange sounds are emanating from our home computer, sharp halting sounds that sound like a cat bringing up a hairball.

Our teenager is sitting before the monitor, listening intently. Every few seconds he pauses to repeat what he's heard and write on a paper.

"What is that, freaky Morse code?" I ask.

"It's counting in Chinese," he replies enthusiastically. "I'm learning Chinese in school."

Let me explain why I went into the next room and laughed until my spleen burst. He's learning one of the most difficult languages on Earth when he doesn't even understand English.

My beloved finds me lying helplessly on the couch, shaking violently from hysterics, tears streaming down my face.

"Chinese!" I say, gasping for breath. In this context, the word is so preposterous I can barely speak it through my guffaws. "He's learning Chinese!"

This is a kid who never responds to anything in his native tongue the first, second or even twentieth time. This is a kid who, in his 15 years of existence, has never understood simple sentences like, "Take out the garbage" or "Clean your room" without translation from his mother or me. And now he's learning Chinese.

The absurdity is almost too much to bear. The other day, I asked him to pick up his clothes. He looked at me dully, as though I was speaking Swahili.

"Huh?"

"Your dirty clothes," I repeated carefully, enunciating every word with the utmost care and exaggeration. "Please pick up your dirty clothes."

I could see the lightbulb over his head had not yet turned on. It probably didn't help that he was simultaneously destroying futuristic storm troopers on a video game, listening to his favorite song on headphones (I think it's called Parents Are Idiots) and twirling our cat with one hand.

"Clothes?" he asked, as if the word was completely foreign.

I took out a dictionary and looked it up for him.

"See? C-L-O-T-H-E-S. From the Old English word clathas. Those grungy things you wear until they stand up and walk around by themselves."

"What about them?" he yelled over the Zap! Zap! of the storm troopers' ray guns and the ear-splitting guitar riffs melting his eardrums.

I removed his earphones and said, "Pick them up off the floor and put them in the dirty clothes hamper."

"Pick them up?" he asked.

This is supposed to be his first language. I know that he knows it. I've heard him say, "Leave my stuff alone, jerkwad, or I'll break your face!" to his brother countless times, and I could swear that's English.

"Yes, 'pick,'" I said. "From the Middle English word picken. And 'up,' from the Modern English dad word meaning if you don't do it you'll be grounded."

"You want me to pick up my dirty clothes and put them in the hamper?" he asked.

I hesitate, because now he has me confused. Maybe I am speaking another language and just don't realize it. Maybe the word "hamper" is actually Dutch for Jell-O, and I'm asking him to turn his clothes into a bouncy dessert.

I never had this problem with my father. He made sure I understood his English all too well and clearly so he never had to repeat. When I was 18 years old, and spending all my time stretched leisurely across the furniture, scarfing down whole refrigerator shelves full of food and spilling crumbs down the cushion while the television hypnotized me for hours, and he walked up and said, "Get a job," with his I've Had Just About Enough Of You expression, you can bet your baloney I understood him. And the inflection in his voice, which suggested that if I didn't act on it immediately my room and board would become available to the highest bidder, helped enormously.

"What part of this don't you understand?" I said, frustrated. "You have dirty clothes lying on the floor that you need to pick up and put in the hamper, and you need to do it now so you don't forget."

That's his other thing, forgetting. If you don't tell him something every 14 seconds he won't remember, then accuse you of never having told him. On the other hand, if you keep telling him something every 14 seconds, he'll answer with, "I will. Just a minute. JEEZ!", then still forget and accuse you.

"Now?" he said, looking confused.

"NOW!" I shouted. "From the Latin nunc, meaning get your rear-end off that chair and do it, and that means NUNC - I mean NOW!"

So now you can imagine why, when I hear him counting, "Yi, er, san, si ...," I have to bust a gut. It's just so ironic, which is from the Greek eironia, meaning he still hasn't picked up his clothes.