Sometimes communication with someone who speaks the same language as yourself is the hardest thing in the world to do.

Take parents, for example. Think back to your last telephone conversation. I can pretty much guarantee that you hung up the phone feeling unsatisfied.

Let’s take the money issue, for example. It seems everyone I know is broke right now, including myself, so naturally money is a point of contention in parental conversations.

It seems I’m always asking them for money without actually coming out and saying it. My conversations usually go something like this:

Parent: “So, have you paid your U-bill yet?”

Me: “Well, um…no. It was only due two weeks ago.”

Parent: “Are you getting nice big pay checks from your job?”

Me: hysterical laughter, joke that I’ve started collecting cans and have devised the perfect ATM machine robbery scheme.

Parent: “Money is really not a laughing matter, missy. You got another overdraft in the mail yesterday. Why can’t you keep better track of your checking account? We’re not rich, you know; your younger sister is in college now, too, so there is just not money to go around. You need to be more responsible.”

Me: Trying not to let irritation seep into my voice, “There’s not much to keep track of in my checking account, Mom. The number zero is pretty easy to understand. By the way, I’ve taken to selling my stuff. I sold a bunch of my CDs and I went to the pawn shop to sell my camera. The guy ripped me off and then said he only makes good deals like that one with, ‘cute young things like me.'” I guess everyone else he just rips off but spares them the come on.

Parent: “You sold your camera? I would have liked to have it! You need to work on being more considerate, Emily. Sometimes you’re the only person you think about.”

Me: In a last ditch effort to ask for some money without actually saying it, “I think I’m going to start selling my blood. I hear they promise the needles are clean these days.”

Parent: “I talked to your grandmother this morning, she is just so difficult to talk to sometimes. I swear she doesn’t hear a thing I say…”

Ahh yes, another lovely testament to parent-child communication.

I’m not sure if my mom just doesn’t hear my sledge hammer-like hints or if this is just all some elaborate plan to let me humiliate myself into begging, starving, having my stuff impounded and then going insane from having to talk to her.

How do I explain to her that college is a very selfish time in life just by its nature?

It’s hard to be concerned about the greater good will of the world when your phone card company and BMG are bickering over who owns your soul and your refrigerator is the home to a jar of catsup and something you can’t identify and are too scared to pick up and inspect.

I know, I know, life can get a lot worse, but to the broke college student it doesn’t seem like it.

It’s not like you can even say, “at least you have your health,” because most college students I know smoke too much, eat crappy food, have a pain that won’t go away and need to be tested for STD’s.

But, such is life. I guess I will continue to communicate ineffectively with my parents out of my own stubbornness and as a result more bills will remain unpaid and my malnutrition will continue to worsen.

I used to scoff at people who said there was an understanding gap between generations.

Why, I then wondered, do grandparents always say the right things and donate money to my cause?

My mother says it’s because they are once removed from my incessant demands.

To them my predicament seems a little charming or something.

I can be charming, I say to my mother. Her response to which is, “Then go be charming and get yourself another job.”

To which I charmingly reply, “I hear the girls with the best charms get the biggest tips at strip clubs.”

To which she charmingly tells me something I shouldn’t repeat in print.

I think about trying to explain to her that I have been looking for a job but it is much harder than it looks, but then I remember she wouldn’t understand anyway, so I hang up the phone feeling frustrated and reach for the help wanted section of the paper.

Again.

Emily McNiel is a senior in journalism mass communication from Iowa City.