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

pm traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 pm 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. "Oh, Jason, take me!"; she panted, her breasts heaving like a college

freshman on $1-a-beer night.

23. 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.

24. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her,

like a dog at a fire hydrant.

25. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

26. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were

a garbage truck backing up.

27. She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.

28. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.

29. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

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