Metaphors from Student Essays Or How NOT to Write Metaphorically   Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other 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.  *****  She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.  *****  The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.  *****  McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.  *****  Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.  *****  Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.  *****  Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.  *****  He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.  *****  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.  *****  The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.  *****  They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.  *****  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 color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.  *****  He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.  *****  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.  *****  The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during the interview portion of "Jeopardy!"  *****  Shots rang out, as shots are wont 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.  *****  "Oh, Jason, take me!" she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.  *****  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.  *****  Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter."  *****  She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.  *****  It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.  *****  The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.  *****  The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.  *****  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.  *****  The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.  *****  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.  *****  She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.  *****  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.