The beer-making machine I’ve been steadily putting together for the past four weeks needs a lot of wire for its guts. The instructions tell me I need wire in three different sizes but don’t say how much, so I have to guess, and guessing means I have to keep going back to the hardware store when I don’t guess right.

On my first visit I asked for six feet of three different colors in various sizes. I really had no idea then how much I was going to need. I barely had enough to get started. When I went back, I asked for twelve feet of almost every color and size. That was almost enough to get all the big chunks of hardware wired together, but not enough to connect them to the switches that would turn things on. Kind of a problem, there. I had to go back for another twelve feet of red in two different sizes.

Today I needed six feet of 14-gauge red and black wire to finish wiring the switches. A guy I hadn’t seen before offered to cut it for me.

“You know this is low-voltage wire,” he said, pausing before he cut it.

“Uh, okay,” I answered, waiting for him to explain why he was telling me this.

But he didn’t. He just went back to measuring and cutting, handed me the wire I asked for and then rang me up. So the first thing I did when I got home was googled the shit out of “low-voltage wire” and “14-gauge wire” and other electrical stuff to see if I could figure out whether or not my control panel was going to melt down or explode in a shower of sparks the first time I switched it on, because this control panel is very definitely not low-voltage. The circuit I was going to complete with the red and black wire I bought today, for instance, would be 240 volts. If I tried to run that through teeny-tiny 22-gauge wire, just for instance, it would go *poof!*

From what I’ve been able to find, though, 14-gauge wire is 14-gauge wire. There’s no such thing as “low-voltage” 14-gauge wire. The cord dangling from the lamp right next to me is 14-gauge wire, for instance, and there’s 120 volts coursing through it right now but it’s not on fire. I think that guy was messing with me.