Metaphor gone wrong like a kid who was not funny try to come up with a funny line and keep ruining the joke by laughing just before the punch line and thus no one hears the punch line and misses the joke

March 26th, 2008

I got the list from my class yesterday and couldn’t stop cracking up.  Michelle and Leyla didn’t find them so funny but I just couldn’t stop laughing… may be it’s because I can totally imagine myself doing same thing?  No…I am not funny enough to come up with these…  My fav. are #4, #14 and #16; what’s yours?

These are supposedly submissions from high school teachers, a product of wild imagination students used in their essays. Frankly I am starting to have my suspicion; there must be some room full of writers coming up with these stuff.

If anyone knows of any book, let me know.

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

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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3 Responses to “Metaphor gone wrong like a kid who was not funny try to come up with a funny line and keep ruining the joke by laughing just before the punch line and thus no one hears the punch line and misses the joke”

  1. cc Says:

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

    Also #16.

    Wonderful addition to a rather drab Wednesday.

  2. cc Says:

    I just realized it would have been more clever had I said:

    Wonderful words to welcome a otherwise weary Wednesday.
    :D

  3. Jin Says:

    Choice of words make such distinction… and yes, it does sound better but I am not a grammar nazi or anything… so it’s all good.

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