Perspectives is a weekly column that takes an inanimate object and dissects or animates it. Watch out for low-lying humor.

Photo by the author. (It’s a chair.)

A chair is one of numerous devices created for sitting (see: couch, loveseat, stool). However, one characteristic is unique to the chair and the stool:

Portability.

Whether in a dining room or computer lab, the chair meanders the floor to answer the call of any weary standee, never losing its sense of home. It establishes itself anywhere and with rapidity: It has four solid feet on which to stand.

Some genetic mutations exist within the breed, of course, and not all types of chairs are accustomed to any movement at all (see: throne, waiting-room chair, park bench).

The chair must be sturdy enough to withstand demanding use, as in lion taming. Frequently, a chair assists the human in reaching a high place. Its lifestyle is not suited for this strenuous demand and the weight focuses in one spot of the chair’s back. This causes traumatic structural damage, possibly collapse.

The chair is meant for sitting; or rather, it has grown accustomed to the human sitting on it. Through the evolutionary process, it has come to necessitate this contact, and contrary to its ancestors of the past (see: big rock, tree stump), the chair derives sexual pleasure from it. It appreciates each adjusting shift of position and a settled posture. The most sexually charged of the chairs is the cushioned chair, which molds to each unique shape and contour.

While one may peg it as perverted, the chair is in fact one of the most generous, most humble pieces of furniture. When a human has stood for an extended length of time, he finds comfort in a chair.

Because the chair is nomadic, it seems always to be there. Does a couch show this same reliability?

For the most part, chairs and humans are in a symbiotic relationship. The human takes relief in sitting after having stood, and the chair finds the contact the only way to make life more real. The relation has withstood thousands of years, and while humans and chairs have legs on which to stand, it will last thousands more.