A friend recently sent me this list of examples of student writing. You have probably seen it before. It follows the comments.
We English teachers (and perhaps others, if they assign writing) have always had our little chuckles over student bloopers and clunkers. And some of these do clunk! This list is an old friend to me. This is the severalth time I have been sent it in recent years. These are golden oldie-moldies by now. I assume they are real. Perhaps they are urban legends. It doesn’t matter.
But I am no longer so easy about laughing at it as I used to be, for there is some bad news implied here and some good news, although it is probably not what you think.
The bad news: Politicians, Pundits, Polemicists, and even some Professors who really know better love lists like this. They present them as proof that today’s kids are a bunch of dummies who can’t write, and today’s teachers are a bunch of dummies (or worse) who can’t (or won’t) teach kids to write. The 4Ps never wrote anything this stupid, that’s for sure! Just ask them.
The good news: At worst, these kids are starting to explore the possibilities of figurative language, even if they aren’t using it very skillfully, yet. After you have taught writing for a while, you learn to be careful how you critique bad writing. You learn the value of tact. Rest assured, that as soon as a student gets the feeling that his attempt is being ridiculed, he will not try anything like it again soon. We have taught a kid to be safe, to write only safe (and dull) stuff, a poor lesson. At worst, these that we see here represent someone’s baby steps.
But the really good news is that some of these were probably intended to be funny and in that succeeded very well. We don’t have the rest of the composition for context, so we can’t know.
So much for my point. Now the list:
Bad Analogies Collected By High School English Teachers
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a ThighMaster.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
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.