Metaphorical Stew

Awarded 2d place for Round 12 (Writing Woes) of the "Invalid Item"  (Jul 08)

Author's Note.  Each year, English teachers from across the USA submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays in order to have them published for the amusement of other teachers across the country.  Yep, this happens.

I came across this list of winning entries and decided to put them together in a coherent story ... of sorts.  The grammar and punctuation were reproduced as written in the original entries.  I hope you like ...

Metaphorical Stew:  A Life Together

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

         He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.  His thoughts tumbled around in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.  He spoke with the kind of wisdom that can only come from experience, like the guy who goes blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with the 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 the pinhole in it.

         The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for awhile.  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 landmine or something.

         She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like the sound a dog makes just before it throws up.  Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.  Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.  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. 

         He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.  He was deeply in love.  When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

         The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law, Phil.  But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.  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 west at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. traveling east at a speed of 35 mph.

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

* * *

         The revelation that her marriage of thirty years had disintegrated because of her husband's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.  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.

Word Count:  527