Some of you may have already seen this, but I thought it was funny enough to post. Passed on by my dear friend Sean (thanks, Sean!):
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. Here are last year’s winners.
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. 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.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8. 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.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. 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.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14 . 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.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
18. Even in his last years, Grand dad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
2 1. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. 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.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
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#17 is so Sam Spade.
ROTFLMAO!
That was priceless. Thanks, Jill.
Some of those are brilliant. :)
tigtog: Yes!
All I can say is: Where do these people teach? Those are two clever by two halves for freshmen composition essays, and anyone sophisticated enough to use the word “wont” knows better than to write it unintentionally. (Jealously dips and dashes down Scott’s eleven o’clocked-shadowed chin like water would were it put in a pinball machine instead of pinballs and didn’t eletrocute him as water in electrical appliances is wont to do.)
I have my suspicions about that list. If they were all from students’ essays, some of them were plagiarised.
Still amusing though ;)
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
This isn’t plagiarism, just imitation. For those not dorky enough, it’s an emulation of Douglas Adams’s (I’m paraphrasing) “The Vogon ships hovered in the air exactly the way bricks don’t.” (The Hitchhikker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
To the student who wrote this: awwwww.
I’m fairly sure these are entries from Bulwer-Lytton contests.
It’s from a Washington Post contest, with some additions along the way.
http://monster-island.org/tinashumor/humor/analogy.html
Google and a healthy skepticism are your friends, folks.
These metaphors make me want to give up writing. It’s a feeling of resigned disappointment in myself, much like when you go to the fridge to get a treat you’ve been saving and find that you’ve already eaten it.
A testament to my dorkery is that, when I saw the title “Chain Mail”, I assumed this was a post about armour :/
His eyes were the pale blue of High Sierra lakes, carved out by glaciers.
Mandolin, I was just thinking that! A lot of these read like Douglas Adams prose, actually.
I personally like #14. The writer must have had Algebra class before English class.
11 is my favorite. That *is* creepy.
She was not just attractive, she was as hot as a pickup’s bumper in a Texas July.
Others, Google from Kenston High
* Her parting words lingered heavily inside me like last night’s Taco Bell.
* A single drop of sweat slowly inched down Chad’s brow — a tiny, glistening Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball of desperation.
* Her blazing eyes dance like Astaire and Rogers, but since they were crossed, it was an ocular tango, and my eyes had to foxtrot just to maintain eye contact.
* She had a voice so husky it could have pulled a dogsled, and the gun she was holding gave me a bad case of barrel envy.
* The neon sign reflected off his gun, like the moonlight reflects off my brother-in-law’s bald head after a night of beer drinking and cow-tipping.
Some of these are pretty good, some funny, some weird, some both. Unfortunately, you can pick out the future College Republicans as well.
Oh my god. These are hilarious!
The one about brother-in-law Phil is just too good. Clever, funny . . . PROFESSIONALLY so. And I would definitely want to read a book by that author.
# 6 is just perfect.
I find #6 to be ridiculously funny. But i’m also a sucker for bad puns, so there you are.
#14 was also good.
Dammit, Craig R. beat me to it.
Numbers 4 and 5 have my vote.
My college roommate was fond of the ’steel trap’ simile. All this list needs is another one he used: We functioned like a well-oiled machine, one with a big red sign saying “DO NOT OIL”.
I’m with plucky punk – 11 could be genuinely creepy with some reworking.
It’s going to be tough not to plagiarize no.21, which I think its actually brilliant in the right context. For example, the description is perfect in an account of the first Barrera/Morales fight (Morales, raised dirt poor in Tijuana, fought with an abandon born of deprivation and wounded pride against the middle-class Mexico City fighter Barrera); or any of Roberto Duran’s early fights. The “hungry” cliche is so common in boxing writing that to use it and then underline its literal applicability would be starkly effective.
that is, “which I think is actually brilliant …”
It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
I can’t actually find anything to make fun of in that one.
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