| English
teachers across the country submit their collections of actual
analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are
published annually, to the amusement of our teachers. 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.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair
after a sneeze.
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.
13. 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 PM traveling at 55 mph, the
other from Topeka at 4:19 PM at a speed of 35 mph.
14. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with
picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
15. John and Mary had never met. They were like two
hummingbirds who had also never met.
16. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant,
and she was the East River.
17. 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.
18. Shots rang out as shots are wont to do.
19. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil.
But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
20. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you
get from not eating for a while.
21. 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.
22. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended
one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
23. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing
kids around with power tools.
24. 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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