This strip was extrapolated from an actual conversation with my daughter. She was having some friend trouble — nothing even as bad as depicted here — but distressing enough. My actual advice was to just wait it out, as kids her age change their minds about their friends roughly 17 times a day, and through all this she’ll figure out who her real friends are.
But as I kicked around what I wanted to say, what I should say, and just how honest I wanted to be, I thought of saying what The Interventionist says here. It would have been the most honest reaction, if also the most cynical. I remember junior high and high school girls in my school being downright vicious with each other at times, then acting as if they were best buds with these very same people a day or two later. It never made any sense to me, so I asked my wife if this was common or just my odd perception. She said this was the case for her and pretty much any female she’s ever known — they all had stories about their emotionally traumatic early teen years.
And, come to think of it, didn’t the late John Hughes base much of his directing career on that kind of conflict?
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