HANDY HINT

 "Whenever I travel, I like to keep the seat next to me empty. I found a great way to do it. When someone walks down the aisle and says to you, "Is someone sitting there?" just say, "No one --- except the Lord."

Carol Leifer

These are metaphors from General Certificate of Secondary Education essays in the United Kingdom....allegedly!  

The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.

It was a working class tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with their power tools.

 He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a dustcart reversing. 

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature British beef. 

 Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first-generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened. 

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a tumble dryer. 

McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a paper bag filled with vegetable soup.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like 
two freight trains, one having left York at 6:36 p.m. travelling at 55 mph, the other from Peterborough
at 4:19p.m. at a speed of 35 mph. 

The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the full stop after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can. 

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

The thunder was ominous sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage
during the storm scene in a play. 

The red brick wall was the colour of a brick-red crayon. 

 Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during the interview portion of Family Fortunes.

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.

The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Glenda Jackson MP in her first of several points of
parliamentary procedure made to Robin Cook MP, Leader of the House of Commons, in the House Judiciary Committee
hearings on the suspension of Keith Vaz MP.

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

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

Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first-generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened. 

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