Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson for April 13, 2015

Pheobe is only wrong because rhetorical victories are meaningful. The problem is, they’re only meaningful to the person who made them. I for one, am happy about your choice to be a cartoonist! You’re very good at what you do! Congrats on your recent release!! Continued good fortune to you!

I may share this with my daughter as encouragement for hanging in with her academics. You’d rule in grad school, honey! Although if she wants to drop out and draw an awesome comic strip, that will be okay too.

Physical abuse also leads to scaring of the psyche.

sis you got a unicorn! you top them

How convenient for a cloud to case a shadow over Dakota’s two friends.

Agreed Phoebe.

Would have to agree with the thought that the intellectual personality tends to be more verbal and subtle in their bullying whereas the physical personality tends to be more explosive and physical. (I try to avoid male-female because I have run across some incredibly nasty and narcissistic males who could be “cattier” than any female and some girls and women who could win a barroom brawl with a biker). I think relational bullying (verbal, non physical) predominates over the physical because physical bullying is apt to get the attention of adults (whether the intervention is appropriate or not does not really matter-it is the drawing of attention that is the point). Verbal/psychological bullying on the other hand tends to be very subtle and overlooked by adults. As the late Sir Terry Pratchett wrote in Hogfather: It is pleasant to hear the sound of children playing as long as you can’t hear what they are saying.

You’re cooler than they are, Phoebe, you have a unicorn!

The thing about bullying, once you graduate you can walk away from it as I did. I’m 2000 miles from my home town. Got an invite to my class reunion the other day and tossed it in the trash. The people I want to see I still connect with. The rest have no power over me or my life.

Both boys and girls engage in such bullying as calling names or “nicknames” that a child despises and then persist in it all the more. And then say that they’re “showing how much they like you,” or some other such rot.

“Rhetorical” victories?