Why English teachers talk to themselves
 

All right all you present and former teachers. This may not be travle related but it is fun and its just for you.

These are worth reading. They'll make you LOL Have a great day!


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?


1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.


2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances
like
underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.


3. 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.


4. She grew on him like she was a colony of e-coli, and he was
room-temperature Canadian beef.


5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes

just
before it throws up.


6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.


7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.


8. 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.


9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a
bowling
ball wouldn't.


10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag
filled
with vegetable soup.


11. 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.


12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.


13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you

fry
them in hot grease.


14. 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.


15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences
that
resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.


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


17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was
the
East river.


18. 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.


19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.


20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil,

this
plan just might work.


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


22. 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.


23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender
leg
behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.


24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around
with
power tools.


25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells,
as
if
she were a garbage truck backing up.

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Thanks for a great laugh, baldworth!

:) Fabulous!

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LOL baldworth, those are great!!

Hi Baldworth....thanks for posting this!! I love it! As someone who is studying to become an English teacher this is very amusing for me to read!

Layla

Priceless!

I am a Media Specialist at a high school...I will share this with everyone tomorrow! They will love it (and need it after our first week back!)

I shall remember these profound statements and incorporate them into my everyday speech. These words of wisdom are forever affixed to my brain, as gum is forever affixed to the underside of a dining table at a truck stop.... :B

My sister the Enlgish major tells me those are more actually similes - but I think they're hilarious, whatever they are!

D'oh! Can't even spell "English major" correctly. Obviously, I am not one.

That brought tears to my eyes. HYSTERICAL!!! Thanks

After a stressful day,... great fun to read!!

As a former English teacher, I enjoyed that immensely. It made me remember all of the great things students can and have said. Thank you for sharing!

P_M -- yes! I laughed, I cried, the tears rolled down my face like water off a duck's back. Not just any duck, but a duck that has approached the water too quickly and ends up *ss over tea kettle with water streaming over it's head, requiring said duck to shake it's heads rapidly to and fro to get the water to roll off like water off it's own back. Like that.(:|
((c))

:-D

Nice to see kids of today have still got imagination.

Well done, see me after class.

Thanks, B.

Some of them are pretty good.

One of the best pieces of satire I've read in a long time:

"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".

((I))

Thanks for the laugh, Baldworth. These are great! #20 is my favorite.

These are quite funny indeed, but they certainly don't have the ring of high school compositions. They remind me of the annual Bulwer-Lytton awards("It was a dark and stormy night...").

I understand that this list had its origins in a Washington Post Style Invitational contest some years ago, and have been bouncing around the net ever since.

I'm not an English teacher but I've read enough papers in other subjects to REALLY appreciate these priceless samples. I am so in love with words.

Thank you, baldworth! You have made me smile today.

Okay, that just made my day! I'm an editor and some of the stuff I read every day would make you run screaming, but these were absolutely priceless! Can't wait to share them with my college-aged daughter!

And I agree the satire of the descriptive phrase crossed with the SAT math question was the best I've read in a while!

Thanks for sharing the laugh!

TinaLee

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

That was mmy favorite. It reminds me of my freshman year roommate who so astutely observed (in regards to one of our hallmates): It's like he like likes her.

I moved out after a month.

Thanks baldworth, this brighten my day at work!

<i>5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.</i>

LOL Thank you so much Baldworth!! :D

laclaire, I thought this entire list, was like, Brilliant !

A friend of mine, a lecturer in English, sent me this one from an exam:

&quot;My friend really annoys me when she behaves like a pre-Madonna.&quot;

Hilarious, Underhill! :D

Great post, it deserves to go ttt.

Or is that pre-Madonna behavior?

I'm still chuckling - a bit like the sound a dog............

Are people here assuming these are all meant to be serious? I'm sure that at least some of them are intentionally funny. Numbers 7, 9 and 19, for example. Maybe they all are....

As mentioned above, they aren't really high school writings, but are from another source and have been around for awhile. I wish my high school students could have been so witty, satirical and ironic.

My old homeroom teacher in Alicante still has a photocopy of an essay I wrote in which I call the Sistine Chapel the Cistern Chapel and describe the bare-bottomed angel as having his &quot;culo al aire&quot; which roughly translates to &quot;his ass hanging out.&quot;

Thank God my language skills got better!

I wish these things don't come up in class- I had a student ask me if I was in junior high &quot;pre-Madonna&quot; . He was definitely trying to figure out how old I was... not asking me if I was spoiled.

Three fun lessons, rolled into one!

1) How old I am
2) How long Madonna has been around
3) The meaning of &quot;pre-Madonna&quot;. :)

The best part of the lesson was the kids comparing my age to the age of their parents...

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Very...VERY funny!!!!

My sister &amp; I went to Venice...we she came back to her office....she had a phone message.
&quot;Are you back from Venus?&quot;
The girl answering the phones had been telling clients all week that she was in Venus.