Mad Metaphors

This is just one item from my Inspirations page. Start there to see what it's doing on a coaching website!

Every year, English teachers from across the country submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors that were found in high school essays for the amusement of other teachers across the country. Here is a selection...

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 cash 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 rubbish 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 Toledo at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. 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 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.

Are you feeling better??