These came from the annual “Dark and Stormy Night” competition. Actual
analogies and metaphors found in high school essays
-
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently
compressed by a Thigh Master. -
His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like
underpants in a dryer without Cling Free. -
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. -
She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was
room-temperature Canadian beef. -
She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just
before it throws up. -
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
-
He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
-
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. -
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling
ball wouldn’t. -
McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled
with vegetable soup. -
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. -
Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
-
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry
them in hot grease. -
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. -
They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that
resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth. -
John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had
also never met. -
He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East
River. -
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. -
Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
-
The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this
plan just might work. -
The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating
for a while. -
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. -
The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg
behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant. -
It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with
power tools. -
He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if
she were a garbage truck backing up. -
Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any
pH cleanser. -
She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
-
It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to
the wall.
