I do not teach creative writing, and rarely do I discuss the use of metaphors and similes in the expository essays I correct. Maybe that is why I do not often see strange metaphors and similes in student work. Maybe English teachers live more dangerously than I do. Have a look at this list of bad metaphors and similes, which was supposedly derived from a contest of submissions by English teachers. Unfortunately the person who posted the list did not link to any information about the contest, and I have been unable to verify the context. The list has been making the rounds on other sites, both with and without the identical text about a contest. I doubt teachers would get away with poking fun at their students in this way, but never mind. It is still funny, even if it smells a little like one of those stale emails forwarded to you by the parents and grandparents of everyone in your address book.

Here are three of the twenty-five in no particular order:

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

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.

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.