OT: English teacher humor

Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual similes and metaphors 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.

   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 machine.

   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 of7:30 p.m..

   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 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, 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 known 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.




 

I would be proud to have written No. 20.

Numbers 12 and 16 made me laugh out loud.

Aren't they special? I get to read things like this every year at the college level. My personal favorite this year (in a different type of writing) was the use of the song "Que Sera Sera" (as recorded by Doris Day) as a serious academic source for a paper on time travel.
Yes. You just can't make this stuff up.

Thanks for the laughs!

omg, those were all funny. This one near about did me in!

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one
slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

I like #18

rosie

Hard to pick a favorite from that bunch. Thanks.

Catnapper - Joanie

These are all entries in the Washington Post's "Style Invitational" series of competitions. Readers are invited to submit original examples of bad writing in a number of categories. These are from 1995 and 1999 and have been circulating since.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/2010/07/0 ... nkset.html

But they ARE funny, even if intentionally. My fave is the "obituaries" category.

I really needed a laugh today. Thanks, MD.

So glad I logged on to get that chuckle before bedtime. A couple of those I wish I'd thought of.

LinkC - In the morning when I have my coffee I'll be reading the selections in your link. I can tell by the categories it will be entertaining reading.

"It was a dark and stormy night' . . .

For those of you who enjoy musing on the eccentricities of grammar, you might be interested in reading what Mark Twain wrote about "The Awful German Language."

http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html#x1

Having spent several years trying to master it, without much success I might add, I had to laugh out loud.

I think some of those folks ought to get out, put your hands on the car, spread em', and do you have anything that will stick poke or cut me........?