It almost sounds like chairs are the refined grains of the furniture world.

Or, perhaps more fittingly, chairs are like shoes. They are modern “conveniences” that force our anatomy into unnatural positions while purporting to correct flaws intrinsic to our bodies.

That was the first time I realized that my wife parses me. Like an interpreting computer language, she listens to what I say, and then parses it into an internal code.

So when I say, “What was that book I was going to send your dad?” what she actually hears is: “What was that … {something} … I was going to {perform an operation on} … {to/for/on behalf of} … {person who makes husband unit think of my father}.”

In other words, she replaces all the details of my memory-centered question with variables, slots into which she plugs various nouns and verbs and prepositions, as appropriate, until she comes up with an answer that connects with the real world at some point. Sometimes she completes this intellectual operation instantly.

Sometimes it’s hours, days, even a week later – depending mostly on the number of possible variables and whether or not she was present when the thing I’m trying to remember took place.

I have known her to bring this off when she was not present and I never actually discussed it with her or sent her a copy of the email.

Back when I was deciding whether, when and whom to marry, I did not know I was going to need this feature in a wife, so it’s blind luck that I happened to marry a woman who had it pre-installed.