Received at work.

(It might just be worth being a high school English teacher if you get this stuff from time to time.)

Excerpts from some high school 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 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 6-foot-3 inch tree.

The man fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

The hailstones leaped from the pavement just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

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.

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

Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap: one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

Shots rang out, as shots are known to do.

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.

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.

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

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

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

and finally, the favorite:

Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.