56 worst/best analogies of high school students
June 19th, 2007 by admin
Apparently the washingtonpost held a contest in which high school teachers sent in the “worst” analogies they’d encountered in grading their students’ papers over the years. (I place “worst” in quotes because many of these actually strike me as quite witty). The top 25 of these have been circulating around the “Sandra Bullock” (”net”, get it?) recently, but I decided to post all 56 that I was able to find. Here they are, in their order of objective funniness (in my opinion):
- Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
- He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.
- Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
- 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.
- John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
- She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
- The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.
- McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
- 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 asolar 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.
- 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.
- Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
- The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
- 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.
- They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
- He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
- Even in his last years, Grand pappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it hadrusted shut.
- He felt like he was being hunted down like a dog, in a place that hunts dogs, I suppose.
- She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.
- She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
- 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.
- “Oh, Jason, take me!” she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.
- It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
- 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.
- The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
- Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.
- Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like “Second Tall Man.”
- The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.
- The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
- She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.
- Her pants fit her like a glove, well, maybe more like a mitten, actually.
- Fishing is like waiting for something that does not happen very often.
- They were as good friends as the people on “Friends.”
- Oooo, he smells bad, she thought, as bad as Calvin Klein’s Obsession would smell if it were called Enema and was made from spoiled Spamburgers instead of natural floral fragrances.
- The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.
- He was as bald as one of the Three Stooges, either Curly or Larry, you know, the one who goes woo woo woo.
- The sardines were packed as tight as the coach section of a 747.
- Her eyes were shining like two marbles that someone dropped in mucus and then held up to catch the light.
- The baseball player stepped out of the box and spit like a fountain statue of a Greek god that scratches itself a lot and spits brown, rusty tobacco water and refuses to sign autographs for all the little Greek kids unless they pay him lots of drachmas.
- I felt a nameless dread. Well, there probably is a long German name for it, like Geschpooklichkeit or something, but I don’t speak German. Anyway, it’s a dread that nobody knows the name for, like those little square plastic gizmos that close your bread bags. I don’t know the name for those either.
- She was as unhappy as when someone puts your cake out in the rain, and all the sweet green icing flows down and then you lose the recipe, and on top of that you can’t sing worth a damn.
- Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.
- It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.
- Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake.
- You know how in “Rocky” he prepares for the fight by punching sides of raw beef? Well, yesterday it was as cold as that meat locker he was in.
- The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.
- Her lips were red and full, like tubes of blood drawn by an inattentive phlebotomist.
- The sunset displayed rich, spectacular hues like a .jpeg file at 10 percent cyan, 10 percent magenta, 60 percent yellow and 10 percent black.
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murky mangler
I love my little brother and am gonna get drunk and sell many of his tshirts later tonight. I’m also gonna get kyle to wear one to the Thievery Corporation concert tonight.
Jun 23rd, 2007 9:29 am
Mary
Help! I’ve started laughing and I can’t stop! Seriously that was so funny, I couldn’t even finish reading them I was laughing so hard tears were streaming down my face!
Sep 3rd, 2008 9:05 pm
Marilyn
Same deal. I was laughing so hard I was crying.
Excellent way to circulate the endorphins.
Sep 4th, 2008 9:20 pm
Adelle
My favorite? #48 hahahahahaaa! and the best one by far is “The sardines were packed as tight as the coach section of a 747″
BRILLIANT!
Sep 5th, 2008 4:38 am
John
#44 is totally hysterical: “He was as bald as one of the Three Stooges, either Curly or Larry, you know, the one who goes woo woo woo.”
My sides are hurting from the laughter
Sep 7th, 2008 4:15 am
Minimise Me
Really I burst into laughing after reading few of those lines. Nice Post
Sep 9th, 2008 2:59 am
Seajaye
Thanks for making my day. I laughed so hard that my sides hurt. My fav. was #31.
Sep 9th, 2008 7:43 am
Anonymous
Boy! if this is how they write in high school today, WE ARE IN BIG TROUBLE
Sep 9th, 2008 3:47 pm
6wings
Wow! These are hilarious. However there was one that I thought was actually quite clever:
Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like “Second Tall Man.”
Sep 10th, 2008 3:01 am
Ritz2781
OMG, .. Hilarious, my favorite is #16, I believe this student got confused and started doing math homework!!
Sep 10th, 2008 10:39 am
Ashley
I’ve got to vote for #25, “She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.” Come on, we all knew girls like that in high school….
Sep 13th, 2008 1:31 pm
Alex
wow that is clasic
Sep 13th, 2008 9:32 pm
Mike
Wow. Amazing. I have to agree with 6wings. “Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like “Second Tall Man.” That one is a gem! 31 and 48 cracked me up something fierce. Great post. Thanks.
Sep 16th, 2008 10:58 pm
Magan
i agree….the movie credits analogy was extremely witty.
Sep 18th, 2008 2:39 pm
Paul
Another website claims that the list appeared in the Washington Post as selections from the Douglas Grant Invitational Style Report, Week 120, Washington Post, July 23, 1995.
The complete list, with the authors cited appears here:
http://monster-island.org/tinashumor/humor/analogy.html
Sep 19th, 2008 11:19 am
Mahlon Rhoades
Yes, they are from a contest. There were two years that had this theme. Here are the links. The “analogies” are brilliant - I don’t know why people feel they need to characterise them as something other than what they are.
see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/16/AR2007031600802.html and
Sep 22nd, 2008 3:08 am
Quen Carpenter
I also like #35, except that it exhibits a grammatical sin that has been showing up regularly of late: that of failure (in part) to use the subjunctive case. She should have written…”if her life WERE a movie, this guy would be buried in the credits as something like ‘Second Tall Man.’”
Sep 22nd, 2008 8:13 am
Anon
LOVE the last one. Look at it again, everyone!
Sep 23rd, 2008 2:37 pm
Crystal H.
I LOVE THIS!! These are hilarious! Especially #3. Thanks for posting these, I will definitely share this website with my readers on my teacher website!
Oct 13th, 2008 4:50 pm
MOMboTV
#51 is pretty funny!
Oct 15th, 2008 8:17 am
Alex C
Yes. This is so, so funny. It’s hard to imagine the same students that come up with these actually turning them in as assignments. I wonder which of them received good grades just for one hilarious line.
Oct 23rd, 2008 11:18 am
LadyM
Ritz2781 I’m really hoping that was some kind of subtle ironic humour? Because #16 is quite obviously a rather witty joke, not a moment of confusion. Almost all of these are clever and obviously intentional, and I’m slightly suspicious as to whether the same person didn’t actually write them all… But it hardly matters, they’re funny! It would be funny in a different way to see samples of genuinely awful writing - wait, what am I saying, I could just go check out the comments on some Youtube videos.
Oct 25th, 2008 9:32 pm
BabySis
Thanks for the laughs! I use this to teach middle school students how NOT to write similes and metaphors!
Oct 27th, 2008 6:05 pm
EXrider
“The sunset displayed rich, spectacular hues like a .jpeg file at 10 percent cyan, 10 percent magenta, 60 percent yellow and 10 percent black.”
That must’ve been a Mac user, as Windows native jpeg libraries do NOT like CMYK Jpegs!
Oct 28th, 2008 9:42 am
Sandy
These are really rich! I loved them.
Nov 1st, 2008 1:02 pm
My Name In Arabic
That’s so funny, like a joke your little brother tells you and it goes on for like, one hour.
Nov 5th, 2008 9:07 am
anon
Freaking awesome!!
Nov 11th, 2008 8:54 pm
alfred f.fitzgerald
I LOVE EDUCATION.ALFRED F.FITZGERALD FROM UPPER MANHATTAN.
Nov 28th, 2008 2:41 pm
Spiegelman
THe one about stapling your tongue to a wall had me laughing so hard I was shaking and crying. And all of this while I’m sicker than a dog…. or should I say, “as sick as a dog who ate something that he shouldn’t have that makes him really really sick.”
Dec 4th, 2008 2:39 pm