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In Entry 6, while explaining the Five Limbs of Living, we noted an old human saying about the initial interactions between humans and hands, that humans “came for the grub, [then] stayed for the rub.” We were reminded recently that there is a related saying that specifically references hands’ status as furniture. Again, hands language is almost frightening in its inadequacy (How do you communicate at all? we sometimes wonder), so this translation will be crude. The first iterations of this saying went something like this: After being fed, time for bed. –or– First, we’re fed, then you’re a bed. –or– It’s good to be fed by our bed. In other words, humans were noting the happy conjunction of two of the Limbs of Living, Eating and Sleeping, which can both be enabled by a single hands doing double duty, first by providing food, second by providing a relaxing furniture experience. In fact, all of this has been distilled down to a single term: bedfed. For humans, being bedfed, that is, having procured a situation in which their hands both feed them and then provide a place to snooze, is the optimum, but it is rarer than you might imagine. Most hands understand their obligation to feed the humans they serve, but many do not comprehend their roles as furniture. So, in some ways, attaining bedfed status remains an ideal humans strive for, as opposed to a reality to take for granted.

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