Every year, English teachers from across the U.S. can submit their collections of actual similes and metaphors found in high school essays. Here are last year’s winners:
- Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had it’s two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
- His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
- 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 about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
- She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room temperature Canadian beef.
- She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
- Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
- He was as tall as a six foot, three inch tree.
- 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.
- The little boat drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
- McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup.
- From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality to it, like when you’re on vacation in another city and “Jeopardy” comes on at 7 PM instead of 7:30.
- Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
- The hailstones leaped form the pavement, just like grubs when you fry them in hot grease.
- Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 PM traveling 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 PM at a speed of 35 mph.
- They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
- John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who also had never met.
- He fell for her like he was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
- 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.
- Shots rang out, as shots are known to do.
- The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
- The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
- He was lame as a duck. Not a metaphorical duck, either but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a landmine or something.
- The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
- It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
- He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
PWNAGES.