Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Charmingly Bad Analogies

Claire and I, former teachers that we are, got a kick out of this collection of really bad analogies picked out of stories written by high school students.

I think you will as well.

Some of these are so cleverly, exquisitely bad that the writer just had to have done it on purpose.  But then again, remembering papers I graded back in the day, I'm afraid that more than a few are probably quite "innocently bad."

I'm dropping in just a few of our favorites but I encourage you to go on over and check out the whole 56.

* Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.

* He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.

* 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 lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.

* John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

* 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.

* The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

* The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.

* Fishing is like waiting for something that does not happen very often.

* It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.