Funny Stuff in My Inbox — High School Essays

These are from a joke email circulating that purports to be “ANALOGIES & METAPHORS FOUND IN HIGH SCHOOL ESSAYS”. I highly doubt that these were actually culled from high school essays. The main reason I don’t believe it is because there is no point of reference. There is no notation or source. The second reason I don’t believe it is because, even if there was a source listed, it’s a freaking chain email, for the love of Pete Sampras. I am skeptical — and you should be, too! — about 73.6% of the news I hear on NPR or NBC; you think I’m going to trust a chain email? And the other strong reason I have to be cynical about the origins of this bit o’ electronically-transmitted comedy is because, with the possible exception of a few cousins and my half-sister, I don’t think I know of anyone sub-20 that can write a complete sentence.

Regardless… it’s still quite a funny collection of sentences.

• 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 socks in a dryer without Cling Free.
• Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
• 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.
• He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
• The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
• 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 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.