PDA

View Full Version : Why English Teachers Die Young. Smile!



Dennis Peacock
01-15-2006, 8:02 PM
(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 raised 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.

28. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

Jim Becker
01-15-2006, 8:34 PM
I really like number 24....... :D :D :D

Mark Stutz
01-15-2006, 9:57 PM
I'm still trying to figure out how one can accidentallystaple ones tongue to anything!:confused:

Andy Hoyt
01-15-2006, 10:28 PM
My thanks to Dennis for posting this are much like my thanks to Dennis for posting this.

Mike Cutler
01-15-2006, 10:49 PM
"Whad. Whasa matta' my inglish, huh". "You don'na unnerstan' me twalking"

Randy Meijer
01-16-2006, 2:42 AM
Mike: It's your riteing that we don't understand!!:D

Craig Zettle
01-16-2006, 4:50 AM
Man did I enjoy that. (I actually teared up, you know, in a good way, not like, you know, in a bad way)

Michael Stafford
01-16-2006, 5:27 AM
When I see writing of this caliber I am glad the authors don't use loaded guns and I think we should take the staplers and power tools away from them as well.....:p

Tom Pritchard
01-16-2006, 5:51 AM
Thanks for posting this Dennis, it really got me laughing! My son is an 11th grade English teacher and I just have to send this to him! He might even be able to add a few of his own now!:D

Jim Hager
01-16-2006, 9:57 AM
I love it. I should have kept a log of the things that I have seen over the years in my classes but I didn't. I have seen some dandy writing in my time. I don't pay a great deal of attention to it though because I work with kids that don't have much grasp on "proper english". If I did I would be as busy as a one armed paper hanger in a windstorm or a one legged man in a butt kickin contest, or :D

Michael Stafford
01-16-2006, 11:41 AM
My wife taught high school when she was first out of college and reminded me of these little stories.

It was the first day of school and while she was doing the registration for her senior home room she asked the students to write a one page paper on what their plans were after high school. Much to her chagrin one young man who proved to be quite a problem child blurted out, "Mrs. Stafford, how you spell college?" (Typed just as spoken.)

A few days later a new student showed up. My wife had seen him on the class rolls but he had missed the first 4 days of class. She registered him and asked where he had been. His response was, "Puttin' in bacca". My wife stared at him blankly and asked, "What did you say?" Once again he said, "Puttin' in bacca!" this time more emphatically. She was at a loss. She came home and related this story to me and I fell out laughing. You have to have some farming background and be from Eastern North Carolina to understand what the young man meant by what he said. "Puttin' in bacca" means that he was priming tobacco or manually harvesting the leaves so they can be cured which is a drying process. You start with the leaves that are lowest on the stalk and work your way up with subsequent primings. I am not sure if there is a more back breaking, dirty, hot job around. After a day of this you are covered with tabacco tar, dirt, sweat, grit and insect bites. I "put in bacca" one Summer and I promised that if I ever got out of that tobacco field I would never go near another one. That is one of the few promises I have been able to keep to myself.;) :D

Ernie Kuhn
01-16-2006, 7:54 PM
Dennis,
I don't know where you collected these but they are priceless. Copied them for future chuckles.
Ernie

Doug Edwards
01-23-2006, 3:00 AM
I thought I had seen these before. They were from a bad analogy contest in the Washington Post. This linky has these and more. I thought they were a little too literate for high school students.

http://monster-island.org/tinashumor/humor/analogy.html