June 08, 2005

OH MERCY

My mom sent me an excellent email forward today:

Why English Teachers Retire Young

Actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays

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.

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, Grandpappy 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.

21. 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 raised 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.

26. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.

27. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

28. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

Posted by Sarah at June 8, 2005 07:54 AM
Comments

Man, I was laughing so hard that I just got caught at work reading a blog.

Household6

Posted by: household6 at June 8, 2005 04:32 PM

I was crying...this stuff is great. Some of them are very, very good...in that Douglas Adams way we find in Hitchhiker's Guide...

Posted by: LCB at June 8, 2005 06:59 PM

I think your mom snookered you, or was snookered herself. I've seen this list before, but it was for a contest rewarding intentionally bad writing, not examples from actual high school papers.

Posted by: bugz at June 9, 2005 10:42 PM

Either way, it's funny.

Posted by: Sarah at June 10, 2005 07:08 AM

Just wanted to say hi, and we miss you...

Posted by: rcbf at June 10, 2005 06:31 PM

What is wrong with me that, after reading #10, I had to get up and leave my desk because I was laughing hysterically.

I mean, #10 was sick, right?

Posted by: Sean at June 10, 2005 10:20 PM

Now, how sick am I. My contribution:

Jack sat in the bleachers, clutching the game winning home run ball, savoring the moment, hoping it could last forever, just as a fat kid clutches his blanket, pulled up over his head, breathing in round after round of moist, parasite-inducing egg-salad farts.

Posted by: Sean at June 10, 2005 10:28 PM

""10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup. ""

Hmmm I'd have gone with Chunky beef vegetable myself....

Posted by: LarryConley at June 12, 2005 03:12 PM

I hate to be a party-pooper, but the "exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't" one is heavily inspired by Douglas Adams. In one of his books he described how spaceships hung motionless in the air. "In much the same way," he wrote, "that bricks don't."

Posted by: Jeff Harrell at June 13, 2005 06:24 AM

Yeah but, funny is funny ;-)

#4, #20 and #28 - made my sides hurt.

Posted by: Pamela at June 14, 2005 12:50 AM