The Swear Jar

A while ago my roommate decided he wanted to stop calling people assholes so he came up with a control measure, anytime i and our other roommate hear him say asshole he would owe us 100 Naira. I was so happy to hear it since he calls me asshole a lot i thought i would probably squeeze a few meals  from him before he could restrain himself but surprisingly i didn't even catch him once (our other roommate caught him twice though). Later my other roommate decided to use the same measure to curb his own habit of bringing out sexual meanings from normal statements, I've caught him twice already.

Upon hearing about this some of my friends decided we should all do it, anyone in the group who catches any other person saying what he shouldn't would have to pay, and we would pile up the money and use it for something later on. Two people were told not to use curse words, another was told not to threaten or refer to killing or basically anything a member of the boko haram would talk about, another friend was told not to refer to sex and i was told not to criticize  anything. In what universe is that possible, how would i not be able to give my opinion on anything, basically saying stuff like "This song is boring" or "Why the funny hat" was to be considered criticism on my path, no one could ever live by those rules, they could just take all my money before hand instead or i could just go mute, so i told them that there's no way in hell I'll agree to those terms so i wasn't a part of the arrangement.

Well as one would expect the lot of them couldn't control themselves, they already said things worth more than 2000 Naira just after 1 hour of making the arrangement and as you would expect everyone decided to quit the group and in the end no one paid. The arrangement my roommates and I have is still functional though and i have to say they've really learnt to control their words in those areas at least. You would watch what you say if words became expensive