Yesterday morning, my oldest son was working on hard on the computer on a history project which is due on Monday.

I’m all for getting work done early, and I love that he’s so engrossed in his project, but he hadn’t gotten any of his chores done.

“Okay, kiddo,” I said. “Time to get dressed and get your chores taken care of.”

“No!” he said. “I can’t. I’m almost done.”

“Just save what you’re doing, and come back to it. You’ve got plenty of hours left to work on it.”

There was no school yesterday, so he literally had hours available to him.

“What?” he shouted, instantly upset. “No! I’m almost done!”

“So save it. You can finish it later. There’s no school today. You’ll have time.”

“Dad,” he said, carefully speaking in a reasonable tone. “I’m almost done. I don’t need to spend any more time on it.”

“Okay,” I said, truly confused. “I just want you to take a break to get your morning chores done.”

“But I’m almost done.”

“Yes. You’re almost done. What’s the problem here?”

“I don’t have hours to spend. I’ll be done in like ten minutes. Not hours. I don’t have to spend hours on it.”

Finally, the light bulb went off in my head. When I’d told him he had hours left to work on it, he thought I was saying he had to spend hours working on it.

“You’re right,” I said. “Now save what you’re doing and go do your chores.”

It’s weird how two people can be speaking the same language and yet so completely misunderstand each other.