Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year’s winners…..
- Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
- His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
- He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
- She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
- She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
- Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
- He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
- The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
- The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
- McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
- From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p. m. instead of 7:30.
- Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
- The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
- Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p. m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p. m. at a speed of 35 mph.
- They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
- John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
- He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
- Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
- Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
- The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
- The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
- He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
- The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
- It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
- He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
Thanks Jim!
This was great. I needed a good laugh this morning.
“Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.” – laughed out loud at that one 🙂
That has to be the funniest thing I’ve seen on the web for a few months. Definitely need to forward this on. Thanks Alex!
[…] Blatant copying from Alex King … […]
Great Alex, now my coworkers definetly think I’m nuts =)
awesomeness
Thank You! I needed to laugh so hard I cried like someone rolling in the floor crying!
[…] Read this! […]
[…] View the complete list here […]
i needed to read something intellectual (o.k. albeit accidently)!
i teach ESL to adults, who are the slowest thinkers in the world.
as i watch their group body language in class,
(praying that someone will suddenly bolt up — realizing he learned something wonderful) — my mind (and eyes) aches watching their communal dullness.
reading rhese metaphors — i realize that I can actually still “THINk” and imagine!
Linda
These are great!
These actually originate from two sources so far as I see:
A 1999 contest hosted by the Washington Post
and this book
http://books.google.[...]ToU8iT_vsk0C
Why someone mixed them together and then tried to pass them off as being written by high school students is one of those bizarre mysteries of the Web.
I recommend searching a distinctive phrase from email messages on snopes.com to find out if they’ve been debunked.
e.g.
“not the metaphorical lame duck” site:snopes.com
in the Google search box.
A friend showed me a printout of this when she was cleaning out her files the other day so this link is doing the rounds of my friends. What a laugh! Thinking of starting the competition locally too!
Cheers