Friday, February 27, 2009

High School Writing

Ah high school.  My days as a caveman at American Fork High hold a very special place in my memory.  They won't leave as much as I try to make them.  Largely, my high school experience was bittersweet, hold the sweet.  It did have a few perks, though.  The list below is a compilation of actual analogies, metaphors, and similies found in high school papers.  Nothing like reliving the ridiculousness of high school through an e-mail forward turned blog post.

I took the liberty of adding one of my own.  If you guess which one it is, you win.  Enjoy!

******

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.

 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.

 Her eyes sparkled and gleamed like the scales of a rainbow trout.

 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.

 You're as fun as a bundle of pixy stix on a rainy day.

 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.

 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.


You can only be young once. But you can always be immature.

-Dave Barry

3 comments:

Sapphire Sting said...

Yeah, I know what you mean about High School. It wasn't until I hit college that I realized what school was really supposed to be like. The whole maturity thing helps, too.

Anonymous said...

Awesome, Stu! Those are really funny! Remember those "Worst Writing" contests? That's what these remind me of.

Russell said...

Um, I think I remember hearing you use the eyes shining like the scales on a rainbow trout before, my guess is that it's yours