The uses of an English major, revisited

A good friend of mine, who happens to be a high school teacher, brought this gem to my attention. Yet another case to be made for the uses of an English major? You be the judge...

Every year, English teachers from across the USA can submit their
collections of actual analogies, metaphors and similes found in high
school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country.

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.

That one is priceless. So painfully earnest and...what the hella.

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.

Wow. I hope someone describes me someday in such laudatory terms ... NOT.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

Well said, friend. Art imitates life.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

Which is heavier, a pound of iron or a pound of feathers?

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.

LOVE the analogy!! Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

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.

A small part of me is embarrassed to admit that I kind of like that one.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

H-O-T-T

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

Say it with me - what the hella?

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.

Shit, I thought I had put the SATs in my past!

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.

WTH?

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.

Ya don't say...!

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.

Paging Paul McCartney's ex-wife: here's the new cause of your life's work...ducks that are land mine casualties.

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.

This is precisely why I grew up overseas.

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

Oh, l'amour!