Like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup
I’m sure I’ve posted this before but I’m too lazy to go look for it and besides, it still makes me laugh. A lot. And that’s what we all need on a Friday.
Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year’s winners.
- 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 machine.
- 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.
- 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, Granddad 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.
January 19th, 2007 21:38
Hee hee hee! Those are great! Thanks for making me cackle at work ;-)
January 20th, 2007 13:03
I laughed like a pair of Chris Moyles Y-Fronts stuck on the end of a car aeriel.
January 20th, 2007 19:12
Oh, thank you! My favorite might just be #6, but they all made me laugh.
January 21st, 2007 10:03
Ooh, I love the penguin header!
January 22nd, 2007 04:23
I hope my English teacher won’t submit any of the nonsense I’ve written.
Those were hilarious.
January 23rd, 2007 09:50
Brilliant.
Although I wouldn’t mock, some of these wouldn’t be out of place in a good book (think Douglas Adams!)
January 23rd, 2007 12:37
Most of those reveal their juvenile authors to be extremely clever, well-educated young people. They are mostly deliberately awful in my view, and it makes my heart sing to know that their teenagers out there who take joy in words that they are able to play with them. I doubt whether the English National Curriculum leaves room for such self-expression and flights of fancy. Any English English teachers among Daisy’s readership?
January 24th, 2007 01:20
Gordon and e, I completely agree with you*. I hope that people laugh with the students rather than at them!
* Well, except that I’d rephrase that to “British teachers of English… :-)
January 24th, 2007 06:27
Brilliant.
I can picture these kids, chins propped on hands, trying to think of that perfect mark winning metaphor.
I mean, No 22? That’s exactly what they look like!
January 24th, 2007 11:52
I have tears streaming down my cheeks. What lovely pupils someone has got.
I can’t help wondering what work was set in order to produce such brilliance?
January 24th, 2007 12:30
hey there, after reading felicity’s post about weight loss I just wanted to come by and say congratulations on yours :-) I can use my belly as a shelf, most practical, if not attractive… anyway, well done, tis a constant struggle, I know…
January 24th, 2007 19:17
LOVE the new headers, Daze! Very guilty about criticising your delay in getting the decs down now!
Particularly like the dozing Lab (?) and the Cat Flap Face – BRILLIANT!!!
January 26th, 2007 12:13
Really, Daisy? I rather think that Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish English teachers do a rather better job than English ones… I used “English” deliberately.
January 27th, 2007 05:38
Love them, love them. Please tell me #6 isn’t the way students speak there. I thought this was just US illiteracy.
March 4th, 2009 18:30
I remember this list. I read it in high school back in the late 90’s. I think the actual source is Gary Larson, creator of, “The Far Side.”.
March 4th, 2009 21:06
I’m sure these were entries in a competition, rather than genuine attempts at analogies etc
March 5th, 2009 04:26
#9 is lifted almost directly from Douglas Adams, God Rest His Soul. I do like these. A lot.
March 5th, 2009 13:42
These are from a bad writing competition and have been on the net for at least a decade. How about a little originality?
March 5th, 2009 21:51
Gerard and Gavin – I don’t know if the list was indeed actually created by Gary Larson, but I have also seen this elsewhere, with the explanation that it was a collection of submissions by writers to a terrible simile contest – NOT submissions by English teachers.
Quite enjoyable!
March 6th, 2009 03:58
We enjoyed this as much as two girls sitting on the couch enjoying reading clever things.
March 6th, 2009 11:23
[...] Because I have to break up my serious study time into small chunks, I tend to spend a lot of time stumbling around on the Internet. I have decided to stop calling it procrastinating, because I have learned some interesting facts and been able to find some helpful websites during these mini-breaks. I found this site last night. I couldn’t resist reading some of the other posts on the blog, but the one I originally stumbled onto was the best. This morning I found this: F*** My Life. You, the viewer, actually get to vote: does the person’s life really suck or did they deserve what happened? Genius. [...]
March 8th, 2009 02:40
Brilliant – absolutely brilliant! #23 put a Family Guy-like scene in my head.
March 11th, 2009 13:44
Number 9 is most definitely very Hitchhikers: “They hung in the sky exactly the way that bricks don’t”, if I am correct. And that just makes me love these all the more. I’ve definitely heard a couple of them before, but they never fail to make me laugh.
March 13th, 2009 17:50
[...] http://chasingdaisy.com/2007/01/19/like-a-hefty-bag-filled-with-vegetable-soup/ [...]
March 15th, 2009 05:49
A tremendous collection and definitely bound to make one laugh.
Loved #6, #11 and #13 from the equally funny lot.
March 15th, 2009 23:39
One of my students attempted a metaphor… “She was cooking rice and so it smelled like rice.” Failure.
March 16th, 2009 02:29
haha. these were amusing. They’re similes(comparison using ‘like’ or ‘as’), however, not metaphors. Very entertaining though, thanks :)
March 19th, 2009 15:26
[...] by Amanda on Mar.19, 2009, under Stumble For today I have a webpage full of some humorous analogies that were submitted by English teachers from all over England. Here is just a sample: [...]
July 7th, 2009 13:33
I was really impressed with 16. There was a certain amount of genius surrounding that one.