Silence costs twice what taking the blame costs

A mustard tee over the back of a kitchen chair. On the chest, a ruled card in dark brown: MY PRICES in thick capitals, and under it four rows, each job on the left running out along a line of dots to its price on the right.

Take the blame, two sweets. Swap seats, one go on the bike. Say nothing, four sweets. Get it from downstairs, one sweet.

Nothing on the card explains why quiet is the dearest thing on it.

Why would one child write out prices for the other?

Because a favour asked for often enough turns into a rate, and writing the rate down stops it being argued from scratch every time.

The card is not there to introduce charging. Charging was already happening — a sweet here, a turn there, settled by negotiation on each occasion. What the card adds is fixity. Four services, four numbers, no discussion.

Why does saying nothing cost twice what taking the blame costs?

Because they are not the same job. Taking the blame ends when the conversation ends; saying nothing has no end date, and the difference is in the price.

Blame is one event with a known cost — a few minutes of somebody being annoyed, and then it is over and paid for. Silence has to hold next week as well, and it can fail by accident: a slip at a meal, an answer to a question nobody expected to be asked. Four sweets against two is a term structure, not a mood, and the card states the figures and leaves the reasoning out the way a rate card does.

Why does the heading say MY PRICES and not OUR PRICES?

Because it is one party's tariff, not an agreed rate. The card is an offer, and the other one is free to decline it.

A jointly set schedule would need both of them to have wanted the same thing at the same time. A tariff needs one of them to have something worth buying that day, and next term the seats, the sweets and the bicycle may all point the other way.

A household that trims a sliver off one plate to level two portions is running the even version of the same arithmetic. A tariff is the version where one side names the number and the other decides whether to pay it.

What are sweets and time on a bicycle doing on the same card?

Because two children generate more than one currency, and this card quietly converts between them.

Sweets are countable, divisible and spent once. A go on the bicycle is a slot — it exists only while the bicycle is free, it cannot be saved up, and it is worth nothing at all in February. SWAP SEATS is the one row priced in the second currency, which puts seats and the bicycle on the same market and says sweets do not reach that far.

An unpaid go is the awkward one, because there is no way to hold it in reserve. It becomes a balance that stays open until the weather and the bicycle and both of them line up again.

Why is there a row of dots between each job and its price?

Because dotted leaders are the grammar of a menu, and a menu is a document that expects to be paid from.

Without them the card is four phrases and four figures sharing a page. With them the eye is made to travel from the job to the number and arrive, one row at a time, which is exactly the movement a price list is designed to produce. The leaders are why this reads as a trade rather than as a note to self.

The same shape turns up wherever an exchange gets written down — including where two arrows overwrite a printed grid and the price is implied rather than stated.

Does a card like this need anybody's permission?

No. A rate two children set between themselves is theirs, and nothing here copies a real menu, a shop's lettering or anyone else's artwork.

If a real one were the point — a café board, a garage's service list, a printed tariff you liked the look of — that is somebody's work, and work of that kind is licensed all the time. The permission is part of the job when the actual card matters. Style has no owner; a particular work does. The rates and the handwriting here belong to the pair who set them, and they will be old enough to have a view on being printed — worth asking then rather than settling it now.

Does it print well?

Yes. It is one flat ink on a mid-tone garment, all type and ruled lines, with nothing that depends on shading.

The outer rule closing the four rows into a rectangle is right here, because the rectangle is the object: a card has an edge in life, so the print is entitled to one. A box drawn around a picture that has no edge of its own is the version that reads as a sticker stuck to the chest.

The dots are the finest marks on the design and want to be fewer and larger than a printed menu would use, or they fill in at fabric scale. Dark brown on mustard carries it; so would black on ecru, or a single cream ink on something dark.

How do I get one made?

Describe the arrangement at JustOG — which jobs were charged for, what the currency was, and which line cost the most. 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.

Four sweets is a lot of sweets. Somebody paid it.