Courtesy Karen

Have a great Thanksgiving! (And enjoy the following!)

Actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays:

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

4. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

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

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

7. 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 free ATM.

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

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

10. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had a surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

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

12. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

13. 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.

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

15. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.

16. Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, but one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

17. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

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

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

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

21. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

22. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.