Plumbing Error # 96

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The digits comprising the numbers 10 through 99 when contemplated not as values, but merely as paired lines offer a variety of implied or suggested ideas. Consider the number 10 in which one half is a line that is straight from one end to the other while the other half follows a continuously curving course that has no end at all. The two lines are polar extremes, but as they are linked in a single number, they bring to mind the Asian idea of yin and yang, opposites contained in one whole. All the coupled twin digits, 22, 33, 44, etc. but especially the parallel ones of eleven, suggest symmetry and teamwork among equals. The set of circles that form the number 88 makes what in all the other two digit numbers is a duet, into a quartet and congers thoughts of common sets of four such as the points of the compass or a very good poker hand. To a degree they also accomplish the curious effect of making a square out of circles. Both 52 and 25 have a certain contrariness to their two component parts, being similar shapes in inverted juxtaposition. The reader who chose to dally further in this line of thinking would no doubt find other examples, but I will quit by pointing out the lovely harmony, even intimacy suggested by the number 69. The two parts nearly embrace. (More so in fonts other than this.) The author is aware that his observation in this case is not original. Be that as it may, there it is, the most harmonious of the double digit numbers. Transpose the digits and the feeling is reversed. Harmony becomes discord and affection, disdain. In the number 96 something is awry, not as it should be. It is no doubt from this discordance that plumbing error number 96 takes its name.

Plumbing error number 96 is that mistake in which the plumber connects the hot water line to the cold water fixtures and the cold water line to the hot water fixtures. The author knows not if any reader will ever commit plumbing error number 96, but he herewith provides a pictorial solution to the problem, just in case. He happened to have the picture in his camera.