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The Lookout Shredded similes, mutilated metaphors For your entertainment, actual similes


and metaphors found by high school English teachers from across the country in their student’s essays: • Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master. •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 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.


• She grew on him like she was a colony of e-coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef. • She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up. •Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever. - He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree. •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. •The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t. •McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup. • 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 7pm instead of 7.30. • Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze. •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. •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. • The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant. • 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.


A young man was a slow worker and found it difficult to hold down a job. After a visit to the employment office, he


was offered work at the local zoo. When he arrived for his first day, the keeper, aware of his reputation, told him to take care of the tortoise section. Later, the keeper dropped by to see how


the young man was doing and found him standing by an empty enclosure with the gate open.


“Where are the tortoises?” he asked. “I can’t believe it,” said the new


employee, “I just opened the door and whooooosh, they were gone!”


The preacher said, “There’s no such thing


as a perfect woman. Anybody who has ever known a perfect woman, stand up.” Nobody stood up. “Those who have ever known a perfect man, stand up.”One old man stood up. “Are you honestly saying you knew


an absolutely perfect man?” he asked, somewhat amazed. “Well now, I didn’t know him personally,”


replied the little old man, “but I have heard a great deal about him. He was my wife’s first husband.”


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