# Forty-seven, and all of them left

> A tally mark shirt for a foster carer — forty-seven hand-drawn strokes for forty-seven placements, and one flat line for what happens at the end of each.

August 18, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/foster-carer-shirt

Tally marks, grouped in five, row after row up the chest. Some strokes sit heavier than others,
some lean the wrong way. At the end of the last row, the number `47`. Underneath, small and flat:
`ALL OF THEM LEFT`.

Nobody drew that line to be sad about it. It's just what happened, forty-seven times.

## What does the number on this shirt actually count?
Every placement a foster carer has taken in, in order, one stroke each.

Not months, not outcomes, not anything a carer would owe an explanation for. A tally mark records
that something happened and nothing about how it went. Forty-seven strokes means forty-seven times
somebody arrived, stayed for a while — a night, a year, longer — and then didn't. The number is the
whole job description, if you already know what fostering is.

## Why hand-drawn tallies instead of a printed number?
A printed `47` would have been made once. These were made forty-seven times, separately.

Look closely and the strokes aren't identical — pressure changes, the angle drifts, some groups of
five sit tighter than others. That unevenness is the actual record: each mark went down on a
different day, in a different mood, and nobody went back afterwards to make them match. A clean
printed number is a design decision. Uneven ink is a log.

## Why does the line underneath say "all of them left" rather than something warmer?
Because that's closer to the sentence a foster carer would actually say.

Fostering is built around an ending that's known from the start — the placement is temporary,
whether that's a matter of policy or just the truth of the situation. Saying it flatly, as fact
rather than as wound, matches how carers tend to talk about the work more than any softer phrasing
would.

### The number and the sentence are two different things
The tally is the achievement — forty-seven times somebody was taken in. The sentence underneath is
the condition that made it fostering rather than something else: every one of them was going to
leave from the day they arrived, and the carer took them in anyway, knowing that. Together, the
shirt states something specific about the shape of this particular job rather than a general
sentiment about caring.

## Does this work only with the exact number given?
No — the format is the tally and the line, not any specific total.

Whatever the real count is stands in for `47`, and the closing line can be the actual fact of a
particular carer's situation rather than this one. What has to stay is the handmade unevenness and
the flatness of the sentence beneath it; a round number and a plain statement are what let the
whole thing read as true rather than staged.

## Does this work for something other than fostering?
Yes — anywhere somebody repeats an attachment on purpose and lets each one go afterwards.

A volunteer driver who's done years of one-way trips. Somebody who's fostered animals ahead of
[the adoption day itself](/stories/adoption-day-shirt) rather than children. A long-term
blood donor. The mechanism is the same: a count
that means something mainly to the person who kept it, and an ending built into every single
instance rather than one loss. [The same logic sits behind a shirt that names nothing and states
only a figure](/stories/sober-anniversary-shirt) — a number the wearer can check and
nobody else needs explained.

## Is there a rights question here?
No — there's nothing borrowed in a tally mark and a private total.

No agency's name, no case detail, no identifying information about any child or animal belongs
anywhere near this design, and none of it is needed. The number and the sentence carry the whole
fact without naming a single one of the forty-seven.

## Does it print well?
Yes, and the imperfection is the part worth protecting rather than tidying up.

Hand-drawn strokes need to stay hand-drawn through to print — a vector trace that straightens every
line loses the thing that makes this honest. A single dark ink on mustard, or a similarly warm,
unshowy ground, keeps the tallies looking like ink on skin rather than a printed pattern. This isn't
a design that wants a second colour.

## How do I get one made?
Describe the count at [JustOG](/) — the number, the grouping, and the line underneath it.
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](/shop).

Forty-seven strokes in five groups, and one hallway they all walked through.