It is with the multi-draft writing process in mind, and the fact that I had done many serious morning meeting talks lately, that I decided to share the following analogies with our students. At Bosque, we always use morning meeting as a learning opportunity, but like other learning experiences, we can have fun as we grow and improve. To that end, here are some of the analogies I read aloud at morning meeting from The Huffington Post, “High School Analogies: The 15 Funniest Metaphors and Similes Created by Teen Writers”:
- She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
- Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from “I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.”
- 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.
- The politician was gone, but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
- Her pants fit her like a glove, well, maybe more like a mitten, actually.
- He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
- The sunset displayed rich, spectacular hues like a .jpeg file at 10 percent cyan, 10 percent magenta, 60 percent yellow, and 10 percent black.
- John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
- The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
- The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.
- 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.
- 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.
- The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
As you can imagine, there were many laughs, and we left morning meeting chuckling. While this may not have rocked anyone’s world or asked them to re-conceptualize something they had long held sacred, it may have allowed our students to laugh at themselves and others; to realize that writing is difficult and even with the best of intentions, we all make mistakes; and when we enjoy something humorous together, it can make us an even closer community.
