Someone I knew years ago had a particular way of saying think.

I’m not going to tell you what it was.

I’ve been saving it for a T-shirt for about twenty-five years.

The first time I heard the expression, I didn’t understand what it meant. I just liked the way it sounded.

The words themselves were ordinary. Nothing remarkable about any of them individually.

It was the arrangement.

Someone explained the meaning to me, and suddenly the words shifted into place.

Oh.

Of course that’s what it means.

There were easier ways to say the same thing. More familiar ways. Probably more grammatically predictable ways.

None of them sounded quite like this.

So the expression stayed.

I don’t know how often I’ve actually said it over the years. But every now and again, it will slip into a conversation.

But I remember it, I think about it, often.

Twenty-five years later, I can still hear the cadence. I can still remember the little moment of translation when a collection of familiar words became an idea I hadn’t encountered in quite that way before.

We talk about the things people leave with us.

Photographs.

Recipes.

Objects.

Stories.

But people leave language, too.

A particular turn of phrase.

A strange pronunciation.

A nickname that makes no sense outside a particular room.

A sentence nobody else would construct quite that way.

Sometimes we borrow those things and make them part of our own vocabulary.

Sometimes we simply keep them.

This one I’ve kept.

Three ordinary words, arranged in an unusual way, carrying the voice of someone who said them long ago.

Maybe that’s why I still want the T-shirt.

Not because the words are clever.

Because somebody once put them together in exactly that order, and I’ve never heard think quite the same way since.