Ode to the Number 10

Written on October 10th, 2010 (which also happened to be when My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic premiered, unbeknownst to me).
 

What is Ten?

Ten is the first Double Digit number, and if Zero, i.e. nothing at all, is a Single Digit number, then that's saying something: Ten is the first number to fundamentally transcend Nothingness. This extra digit is the course of Ten's primary set of connotations--completeness, perfection, rectitude. These values glow in its wand-and-halo-like periphery in fields from the Olympics to the Tarot. (Firesign Theater is less flattering, slapping the equally mystical but much uglier label of "I-ball" onto this otherwise venerated number.) Cards with ten pips are crowded, though with an appealing central hole, and have names that take up the most space, thanks to the double-digit property that renders attempts to transcend them into strange creatures like jacks, queens and kings, in much the way that extra lives in Super Mario Bros beyond the tenth are translated into letters or bizarre pictographs by an insufficiently versed 8-bit processor. Ten is All, and beyond Ten comes More Than All.

But why is this number the division-point between Some and Something More? Why, because it's the base of choice for modern arithmetic! There are ten Arabic numerals, and the multiplier for the value of a number in any decimal place is a power of ten. If our arithmetic base were something else, that something else would have the honor of being the Straight and Round.

So why ten? Is it the fact that ten bowling pins make such a nice neat triangle, with one tucked into the middle like a gooey bubble-gum center? NO, although that surely helps! It's the celebrated ooh and aah of the mother who
surveys her newborn whelp to count its ten perfect fingers and ten perfect toes. (!) _If Only This Were A Joke_. But in all truth, the basis for the perfection of the number ten is the twofold fact of humanity:

(1) We are vertebrates who love digits, and thus we would not dare to slough or hide, as some creatures do, the smallest digits to be had on the tetrapodal frame, FIVE to an extremity, and (2) We are things that have use for symmetry in only ONE dimension, not two or three, and as such the calculation is: 
FOUR(tetra) times FIVE digits divided by (ONE times two [the number of directions on a dimensional axis]). 4*5/(1*2) = 10, of course. If we were more symmetrical from front to back, we'd count our fingers and toes together, and our number of power would be twenty, as it was for certain Pre-Columbians.

So the perfection of Ten rests on the fact of amphibians evolving from fish with exactly Five digits per fin, not four nor seven nor eight. There have been creatures throughout evolutionary history who tried and failed to thrive with a
different number of digits. Was this deviance the -reason- for their downfall?? Or, more likely, was it Beloved Randomness that the survivors happened to be blessed with just these dainty reference points and no others: thumb; index; middle; ring; pinky? (The list of ghosts in Pac-Man also includes a Pinky, but this list is only four long, lending credence to the arbitrariness theory.)

And if the latter, then Ten is a divine fusion of the Predestined and the Arbitrary, the Of Course It Is and the Look How Well I Can Balance Stepping With Swimming With All These Awesome Points Of Articulation. Five is the first
number whose middle has middles between itself and the ends, lending it credence; the parent of the five-figure box plot. And ten is the first number that gives it balance by reflecting with the left hand what Providence has done
for the right. Ten is a fusion of Even and Odd--the evenhandedness of symmetry mixed with the oddness of Nature's Ways. 2 * 5 = 10. What a number.

Ten is like a concept just old enough to babysit other concepts. Ten is a tangle of tires ready to be hop-stepped through. Ten is a pack of hot dogs; a game of Beer Pong; a pretty pile of Sephirot; a couple of primitive Go piece pyramids, black and white; a neon-fueled primitive pinball machine whose 1 says Substance and whose 0 says Excitement! What a beautiful marriage. What a well-earned piece of perfection.

Happy birthday, 10.