2011, 2012, and then a year that is not there

A folded sheet printed across the chest of a tan tee, the tee itself half out of its shipping bag on concrete. HOUSE RULES at the top in blue, double-underlined. Three rules under it: LOSER DEALS, NO GOING BACK ON A SWAP, THE STAIRS ARE OUT. Below the fold, in a later pen, NO HELPING with a line through it and HELPING IS ALLOWED written underneath. Down the left margin, three years in red: 2011, 2012, 2014.

2013 is not on the sheet. Whatever that summer was, the rules did not get opened.

Why do the years in the margin skip from 2012 to 2014?

Nothing on the sheet says, and the sheet is stronger for it.

Three years are marked in red, one to a line, in the order a running record gets marked. The gap is the most informative thing on the page precisely because it carries no explanation: a year the rules were not opened is a year they either held or stopped mattering, and the paper does not distinguish between those. Anybody who has kept a household record has a gap like it somewhere. The pull is to fill it in with a story — a house move, a falling-out, a summer somebody was away — and every story you supply is weaker than the blank.

What is the fold doing across the middle of the sheet?

It separates what was agreed once from what got argued back into the text later.

Everything above the crease is the original set, in one pen and one hand, laid out as a clean list. Everything below it arrived afterwards. That is not a design flourish; it is what happens to a sheet that lives folded in a pocket or a drawer and comes out whenever something needs settling. The crease works as a boundary because the writing respects it — the additions start below the fold instead of squeezing into the space above, which leaves the sheet holding both its versions at once, the way a signed set of room rules keeps its own struck-out clause.

Why is a rule reversed instead of deleted?

Because the reversal records who was behind at the time, and a deletion would not.

NO HELPING is struck through with a single ruled line and HELPING IS ALLOWED is written under it in blue capitals, larger than the rule it displaced. A code that swings to its own opposite is answering to whoever is currently losing, and keeping the old text on the page is what makes that possible — both positions are available and either can be pointed at. A set of rules with a forfeit in it tends to grow the other half too, a penalty written out and served on its own slip.

Do I need permission to print rules like these?

No — a set of rules two children wrote out for themselves is theirs, and nothing here reproduces anybody else's material.

The wording, the years and the pens on this one were invented for the design and point at no real household. A real sheet is a different question, and a domestic one: the handwriting belongs to the two who did the writing, they will have a view about it eventually, and asking is better than assuming. Style has no owner. A work does — a published line, a character, a crest all belong to somebody and are all licensable, which makes them worth clearing when a real one is the point of the shirt and not worth the paperwork when it is not.

Why is one of the rules about the stairs?

Because the arrangement covers a territory as well as a set of games.

LOSER DEALS and NO GOING BACK ON A SWAP govern transactions. THE STAIRS ARE OUT governs a place, which means that at some point the two of them drew a boundary across the actual house and filed it in the same document as the card rules. That is where rules for playing turn into rules for living somewhere, and it is usually the clause a stranger finds strangest, because it refers to a hazard or an incident recorded nowhere else. Rules about ground can also run with nothing written down at all.

Shouldn't the oldest rules look faded if the sheet is that old?

They would if the sheet were an heirloom. These read at full strength because the sheet stayed in use.

The three original rules are as dark as the additions under the fold. A document that fades evenly is one that sat undisturbed; a document that gets carried, unfolded and gone over keeps its top lines strong, because those are the ones consulted most. There is a print argument too — an evenly aged sheet goes soft and grey right across a chest, which is the wrong result for a piece whose subject is a rule you can still read. The wear here sits in the crease and the paper's texture, not in the ink.

Does it print well?

Yes — three flat inks and a fold, with no soft gradient anywhere in it.

Blue for the heading and the rules, red for the years, dark for the single line through NO HELPING. Each one solid. The fold is the element that invites a wide soft shadow, and a wide soft shadow is what goes muddy on fabric; a narrow band of slightly darker paper does the same job and survives the weave. The sheet's own irregular edge is the edge of the print, with no rectangle round it. Tan, sand and stone let the paper ground sit almost unprinted, which keeps the ink count where it is.

How do I get one made?

Describe the sheet at JustOG — which rules, which one gets reversed, and which years run down the side. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the shop.

HELPING IS ALLOWED is in the same blue as the heading. Somebody went and found that pen again.