How to Write a Bad Analogy
This piece has been on e-mail humour lists for as long as I can remember. These are purported to have come from high school essays, with student names and states to support that idea. Some of them seem too contrived to be student writing.
However, some of them sound like my high-school-level writing skill.
- 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. (Joseph Romm, Washington)
- 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. (Rich Murphy, Fairfax Station)
- The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t. (Russell Beland, Springfield)
- McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup. (Paul Sabourin, Silver Spring)
- 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 p.m. instead of 7:30 (ed: or vice versa). (Roy Ashley, Washington)
- Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)
- Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center. (Russell Beland, Springfield)
- 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 (Ken Krattenmaker, Landover Hills)
- Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever. (Unknown)
- He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree. (Jack Bross, Chevy Chase)
- The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease. (Gary F. Hevel, Silver Spring)
- 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.” (Russell Beland, Springfield)
- 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. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington)
- The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can. (Wayne Goode, Madison, Ala.)
- They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth (Paul Kocak, Syracuse, N.Y.)
- John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met. (Russell Beland, Springfield)
- 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. (Barbara Fetherolf, Alexandria)
- His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)
- The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
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These are written by adult readers of the Washington Post. You can see a few not in your list here:
http://monster-island.org/tinashumor/humor/analogy.html
My favourites are:
“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.”
- and:
“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.”
Ray