The shirt says I HAD POTENTIAL in white capitals, and beneath the words there is a drawing. A curved ramp descends from left to right. At the top left, on the upper ledge, sits a dashed empty circle. At the bottom right, on the flat lower ledge, rests a solid white ball. The ramp is not a straight diagonal; it bows, the way a skate ramp bows, or the way a hill road bows when you see it from the side. The dashed circle is the ball as it was: an outline, a maybe, a thing that could have been. The solid ball is the ball as it is: arrived, at rest, done.
I keep looking at that dashed circle. It is the most honest part of the design. A dashed line in a physics diagram usually means something is not there yet, or not there any more, or is only hypothetical. The ball at the top has not fallen. It is potential energy drawn as an absence. The ball at the bottom has fallen, and the falling is over, and what remains is a solid white circle on a flat white ledge. The shirt does not show the middle. It shows the before and the after, and lets you supply the bit in between, which is the bit where the noise happens.
This is a physics joke, or a joke about physics, or a joke about the way people talk about physics when they mean something else. Potential energy is a real term. It describes the energy an object has because of its position in a field. A ball at the top of a ramp has more of it than a ball at the bottom. The shirt uses the word potential in both senses at once: the technical sense, which is neutral and measurable, and the ordinary sense, which is a judgement. To say someone had potential is to say they did not use it. The past tense does the work. Had is a small word with a long shadow.
I am not going to pretend the shirt is a physics lesson. It is a piece of comic self-description, and the drawing is doing the heavy lifting. The dashed circle is the self you were supposed to become. The solid ball is the self you are. The ramp is the distance between them, and the shirt does not tell you whether the journey was a slide or a fall or a gentle roll. It just shows the two positions and lets the wearer decide how to feel about the gap.
What interests me is the minimalism. There is no caption under the drawing, no arrow, no equation. The words are at the top, the diagram is below, and the whole thing is white on whatever colour the shirt happens to be. The design trusts you to read it. If you do not know what potential energy is, the joke still works, because the words I had potential are a familiar sentence. If you do know, the drawing adds a second layer: the dashed circle is not just a metaphor, it is a diagram of the metaphor. The shirt is clever without being smug about it. It does not explain itself.
I have been thinking about the phrase itself. I had potential is something people say about themselves when they are being wry, or when they are being sad, or when they are being both and do not want to admit which. It is a sentence that looks backward. It implies a moment of assessment, a report card, a teacher’s comment, a parent’s sigh. The shirt takes that sentence and gives it a picture, and the picture is a ball that has stopped moving. There is a kind of peace in that. The ball is not falling any more. It is just sitting there, solid, on the flat ledge, being a ball.
The dashed circle is the part I find funny. It is an outline of a ball that is not there. In a physics diagram, a dashed circle often marks a position that is possible but not actual, or a path that could have been taken. On the shirt, it sits at the top of the ramp like a ghost of the self before the drop. The solid ball at the bottom is the self after. The ramp is curved, which matters: a straight diagonal would look like a slide, a playground thing, a bit too eager. The curve makes it look like a graph, or a hill, or the arc of something that has already happened. The curve is the difference between a joke about falling and a joke about having fallen.
I do not know who the shirt is for. I suspect it is for people who have a complicated relationship with the word potential, which is most people who have ever been told they were not living up to it. The shirt does not console. It does not say you still have potential or potential is overrated. It just says I had potential, and shows you the ball at the bottom, and lets you wear it. There is a kind of honesty in that which I find more appealing than the usual motivational fare. The ball at the bottom is not a failure. It is a ball. It has mass and position and a flat ledge to rest on. The dashed circle is gone. The solid one remains.
If you want to look at the shirt yourself, it is the I Had Potential ramp-and-ball physics diagram from Quirky Cotton Collective. I have not worn it. I have only looked at the drawing, and thought about the dashed circle, and the way a small white ball can carry a whole sentence about time and expectation without saying a word.
Editorial note: This publication and Quirky Cotton Collective share an owner.