The Burdens of Being Upright

Dec 8, 2002

"All the kids are fucking dead." I write, "With love, and a gun to my head."

i dont know what to do. i still have that cant-breathe feeling like someone has punched me in the gut. but maybe that will never go away. except now its mixed with.... sympathy? i'm still in shock and i have no idea how to react. what is overreacting and what's just being an idiot? i have a stupid conscience that cant stand to see him hurting and feels i should forgive him. but i really really do not want to. so i wont. this just, it just isnt right. the only thing i can do right now is keep myself distracted so i dont have to think about it. so here, another whitty distraction:
The following are actual analogies and metaphorsfound in high school essays:

~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.

~He spoke with 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 about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

~She grew on him like E. coli and he was room temperature Canadian beef.

~She had a deep throaty genuine laugh like that sound a dog makes just before he throws up.

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

~He was as tall as a six foot three inch tree.

~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 little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

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

~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 pm instead of 7:30.

~Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

~The hailstones leaped up off the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

~Long separated by cruel fate, the star crossed lovers raced across a grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, on 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.

~They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resemble Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

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

~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.

~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.

~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 really duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a landmine or something.

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

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

~He was so deeply in love that when she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

~She was as easy as the TV guide crossword.

~Her eyes were the blue like swimming pools, only they had forgotten to put in any algae cleaner.

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

~Her voice had that tense grating quality, like a generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightening.

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

posted by sarah 7:02 PM