The Wonders of English

[Heck. Another one. I love this.]

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.....

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 i n 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 af ormerly
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 PM 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, Granddad 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 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 withpower
tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she
were a garbage truck backing up.