From the annual "Dark and Stormy Night" competition.
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. 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.

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, Grandpappy 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.

26. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten
to put in any pH cleanser.

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

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