Heh

These came from the annual "Dark and Stormy Night" competition. 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 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.



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.