Sixteen year old Zack was listening to music in his room on his CD player with his earphones in. That way he couldn't hear whatever chores his parents shouted up at him and asked him to do. Well, at least he could saythat, even though he could hear if he wanted to. It wasn't like Zack to skive off doing chores, it was usually only the clean up after dinner, hang out the washing, take in the washing, hoover the floors...but he wasn't asked to do that everyday...except for the wash up or dry up. This dinner was always the exception. Roast chicken which was cooked almost always on Sundays was one of the worst clean up jobs ever. It had the most pots and plates used in the house even though it was for just the three of them. The only other dinners Zack hated cleaning up after were when his mom cooked homemade lasagne or any other roast dish with vegetables, gravy and mashed potatoes.

Zack had to bide his time to get it exactly right, so his mother washed up and Zack would come down conveniently when it was all done so he could take over and dry up the ware. He heard the clink of cutlery on the draining board in the interval between each song. Soon enough he heard the clash of the plates going into the cupboard. He groaned aloud. There was no space on the draining board left, so she started drying up, leaving the worst part of doing the dishes for him. It was either not go down at all and get given out to later for not helping or go down now and face the dreaded end-of-wash-up with the messy gravy pot and the stack of pots for steaming the vegetables. (He could never understand why it took threepots to do that.) Taking out the earphones he sighed, rolled off his bed and trudged downstairs.

"Ah perfect timing Zack, your favourite part is left" his mom said. Without arguing he rolled up his sleeves and dipped his hands into the soapy, luke warm water that barely submerged the roasting dish.
"There's not enough water in here" Zack complained.
"There's still some hot water in the kettle, use that" she said as she dried the potato masher. There was no use in trying to get out of it this time Zack thought. Finally he got to the monster of a dish – his second, he thought confused. This was one that had chicken wings cooked on it yesterday by his dad for lunch. It had been sitting there for a whole day. Great. He scrubbed the dish futilely with the little silver thing, getting angry after four minutes of hard scrubbing. The crisped and hardened sauce and chicken skin would not come out of the corners.
"Aaaaaarggh!" he panted and screamed, violently scrubbing. His dad walked into the kitchen.
"What are you doing?" he asked concerned, with his arm folded. Zack explained everything, exasperated. His father laughed.
"You never were cut out for work like this, good thing you seem to be fit for SOLDIER huh!" His father smiled, shook his head, shrugged and walked away. Zack flopped down on a chair and laughed.