Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson for December 23, 2023

Could she still wish for a lot of gold?

I’m ashamed to admit that world peace isn’t in my top 5.

“Psst. Your line is, ’I’m going to free Marigold’. Anytime.”

“Mari…I can’t.”

“Of course you can! You just go ‘Mari, I wish you free!’”

(I know Phoebe already freed Marigold in the first Christmas arc, only for Mari to stay anyway, but I couldn’t resist an Aladdin reference.)

How long would World Peace last? If Marigold’s powers are limited, it might only last for 1 second. Maybe she could cause guns to jam.

World peace is easy for Marigold. Marigold could just shift all humanity into individual dimensions, one per person.

She’s gone more realistic, and it might be a slightly more peaceful world if people pronounced and spelled Phoebe right.

Wishing is a tricky business. Would it really be “World peace” if all those who are not predisposed to cooperate with it are all killed or lobotomized or otherwise removed from the world? Is a world without people, or one filled with automatons, really a world at peace? Or can that notion only be meaningful if characterized by universally active and dynamic choice and cooperation and wisdom? What about predatory behavior among other animals on the planet? What about natural destructive phenomena such as volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, et al? These aren’t exactly “peaceful”. Is a youngster like Phoebe capable of conceiving such a notion as “world peace”, let alone wishing for it? Is even a unicorn? The wish may be just as mythological and imaginary as the unicorn. Before there can be a wish, there must be a vision of what it is, what would make it worthwhile. Without such vision, one can never know if the wish is granted. Even the angelic announcement often quoted at this time of year proclaiming “peace on earth, good will toward Men” is misunderstood. It is actually misquoted due to mistranslation. Its original is better translated as “Peace on earth to Men of good will” — that is, to humans who are willing to try to be good. For that, even those must know what is good. The Jewish prophet Micah offered such a definition within the same cultural context as those who heard the angelic proclamation. Micah 6:8 — “He has shown you, O Mankind, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”. Justice is at times severe, even deadly. But it is a prerequisite for peace, just as much as is kindness. Somehow, I suspect neither Phoebe, Marigold, nor Dana Simpson is quite up to the task of fitting this into a pithy phrase for a wish list. Nonetheless, let us wish them all the best at this holiday season.

What is harder to obtain? World Peace or people learning to say “FEE-BEE”?

Dakota knows how to pronounce Phoebe. She just mangles it for fun.

My wish would be infinite money that miraculously doesn’t screw up the economy by existing. It’s simultaneously self serving, AND benefits the world, because of how much I can donate.

Phoebe is , or was a common name, I can see in modern times it would be sort of rare, lots of different names kids have today! For example, “Aiden”, my late father used to call him “Alien”, he never got it right!

Hey, 1000 year-old wish-granting unicorn. Wanna use your powers to fix the world without a prompt from humans? No? Too busy staring at your own reflection?

That’s what I thought.

Well, we live in a world where world peace can only be achieved by global conquest and billions of deaths.

So, no.

Fighting for peace is like…

if homework was in video games, things I’m sure would have been very different for me… maybe. :J

Marigold REALLY hasn’t learned much yet about how humans think.

Every Valentine’s Day I got to see 32 different spellings of “Arthur”.

It’s a Christmas wish, Marigold, not a bona fide miracle.

Besides, let’s be real here—if unicorns really had the power to create world peace simply by granting a wish, they would’ve done it by now already. ;)

Not gonna lie, that first one is a good thought on Phoebe’s part.

Be careful with that second wish, Phoebe. Could end up being “Donkey Kong Jr. Math”. Or worse, “Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego?” without access to the internet or even the pocket encyclopedia that the game came with.

I was sure that World peace was more a miracle than a wish.

one time i my teacher at smc assigned me to ‘’play video games’’ for summer homework.

Rule number two about magic wishes: don’t let anyone else know you did it.