Humour: What Students Purportedly Write....

[mechtild]

I usually groan when relatives send me forwarded jokes and humour pieces in my email, but parts of this one made me laugh till I wept.

These are supposed to be real examples, but I almost can't believe it. I'm not a teacher, so I can't judge properly.

Why English Teachers Die Young

Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual similes and metaphors found in high school essays.These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year's winners.

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. 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.

~ Frodo patrols the beach on Tol Eressea while Elves frolic in the waves.

(O.K., so it's Lanakai Beach in Hawaii, but it's sort of like Tol Eressea.)


~ Mechtild

Comments

[shirebound]

Howl! Once I started snortling and snickering at these, I couldn't stop.

Ooooh, love the beach pic! Hope Frodo has his swim trunks on under all that.

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

I swear, I've read these before, but they just lay me out. Especially "Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do." That is so simple it's elegant.

Love the Frodo on the beach picture.

[ellinestel.livejournal.com]

Oh, my... These just killed me! :D

[bagma.livejournal.com]

They are priceless!:D
I'm very fond of #12: I've never thought a nose after a sneeze could be romantic; apparently I was wrong.
Poor Frodo needs a holiday, BTW; he looks stressed.

[notabluemaia.livejournal.com]

*snort* Mechtild, those are hilarious. (Be sure to stop by bagma for students' thoughts on the Renaissance.)

[(Anonymous)]

LOL!!
I can see several if these actuallly *working*, though - in the proper ironic context. That would for instance be nos. 4 and 18. But I take it there was no irony whatsoever involved when all these were written.........

[elasg.livejournal.com]

Those are PRICELESS! Omg, I couldn't stop giggling! I would pick a favorite, but they are all hysterical! No wonder the teachers collect them! LOL!

[maewyn-2.livejournal.com]

I love these - especially 18 and 20. At a pinch, I think they could really work!

[aussiepeach.livejournal.com]

They sound like entries in the Worst Opening Sentence (Bulwyer Lytton) comp to me.:D

[taerie.livejournal.com]

I loved these!! Some of them must be by some very talented students who we MUST be going to hear more from professionally some day. Others are just adorable. When we owned a comic book store the teenaged boys would ask me to read their literary endeavors. This was sometimes challenging when they would be inadvertently hilarious.. but I always managed to read them with kind solemnity. It could be very difficult though.
I forwarded this to my husband. He loves these too.
I can see Frodo is being seized by the hobbit instinct to dig a hole in that sand hill and build a beach house. Should be a babe magnet for him.

[silvermoonlady.livejournal.com]

*cackles madly, falls of chair and dies*

Thank you, needed that on a monday morning!! :D

[este-tangletoes.livejournal.com]

No. 22 had me in stitches.