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.
Joseph Romm, Washington

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.
Rich Murphy, Fairfax Station

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
Russell Beland, Springfield

McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup.
Paul Sabourin, Silver Spring

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and “Jeopardy� comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30.
Roy Ashley, Washington

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.
Chuck Smith, Woodbridge

Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
Russell Beland, Springfield

Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake
Ken Krattenmaker, Landover Hills

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

He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
Jack Bross, Chevy Chase

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
Gary F. Hevel, Silver Spring

Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like “Second Tall Man.�
Russell Beland, Springfield

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.
Jennifer Hart, Arlington

The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
Wayne Goode, Madison, Ala.

They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth
Paul Kocak, Syracuse, N.Y.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
Russell Beland, Springfield

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.
Barbara Fetherolf, Alexandria

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free
Chuck Smith, Woodbridge

The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
Unknown

The line separating painfully bad analogies from weirdly good ones is as thin as a soup made from the shadow of a chicken that was starved to death by Abraham Lincoln.   Here are some fine examples:

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

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

He felt like he was being hunted down like a dog, in a place that hunts dogs, I suppose.

The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object. You know how in “Rockyâ€? he prepares for the fight by punching sides of raw beef? Well, yesterday it was as cold as that meat locker he was in.

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 beef.

She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first-generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened. A branch fell from the tree like a trunk falling off an elephant. The painting was very Escher-like, as if Escher had painted an exact copy of an Escher painting.

Fishing is like waiting for something that does not happen very often.

They were as good friends as the people on “Friends.â€? He was as bald as one of the Three Stooges, either Curly or Larry, you know, the one who goes woo woo woo. The sardines were packed as tight as the coach section of a 747. Her eyes were shining like two marbles that someone dropped in mucus and then held up to catch the light. The sunset displayed rich, spectacular hues like a .jpeg file at 20 percent cyan, 10 percent magenta, 60 percent yellow and 10 percent black.