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Samples of High School Writing

at least some of these, like the first one, are attributed to Richard Lederer

  1. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper.

  2. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

  3. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

  4. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

  5. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

  6. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

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

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

  9. 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.

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

  11. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.

  12. 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.

  13. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil,this plan just might work.

  14. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

  15. 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.

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

  17. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

  18. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

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

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

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