Dear Identity Theory Readers,
If you’re feeling anxiety about what to do today, here’s an easy win: read “Miss Venezuela,” a new story from Naihobe Gonzalez:
“Rosalía’s father was the first man to lie to her. When she was still a toddler, he promised her she would become a beauty queen. Each weekend when he came home from the oil fields, he picked her up in his arms and serenaded her with the same song: ‘My pretty little doll, of golden hair, pearled teeth, and ruby lips…’ It didn’t matter that her hair was not golden, but black as the petroleum he extracted from the ground. Golden or onyx, her hair was a silken treasure. On quiet weekday nights when they were alone, her mother ran her fingers through Rosalía’s mane while they watched beautiful people act in telenovelas. ‘My pretty girl,’ she’d say. ‘My lucky girl.’”
Another Easy Win: The Golden Girls
“At the ‘residential facility’ I work at, we watch The Golden Girls every Saturday morning at 6:30 AM, right after breakfast. We watch it as a compromise with L, who used to snatch the clicker out of anyone’s hand and change the channel. He thinks the Common Area is his, which it is, we tell him, but it is everyone else’s too. Rather than fighting with him all the time I suggested why don’t we keep the clicker with staff and make a TV ‘schedule.’ Everyone was like that’s a great idea! Why didn’t we think of that? Because sometimes the solution is right there and it’s hard to see. Sometimes the problem is not the person but the things around us, the thing which we are fighting over. I learned this in every relationship I have been in. Often it is not the person, it’s the object and act that needs to be resolved. Of course, you cannot just give your screaming children away, so sometimes you need to find a different answer. As a parent I learned if they are fighting over a toy, remove the toy and send them outside to play. I do not know if this is the way to be, but what can we ever really know about anything. It is all trial and guess and we just hope in the end for a little bit of praise. On The Golden Girls this morning Estelle Getty who plays Sophia, the mother, decides to have her own wake.”
Read “Eulogy at My Own Wake After The Golden Girls” by Sean Thomas Dougherty
Now Stop and Take a Deep Breath
See? This was easy.
Breezy Links
We’re adding to our fiction team. Read and edit stories with us! Applications are open through March 14th.
And, look: We’re doing more Instagram these days.
Thanks for reading.
“Take it easy but take it,”
Matt B.
Identity Theory