(Found in High School papers, north America)
 

~ 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.

~ 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.

~ 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.
 

~ 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.

~ 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.”

~ 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.

~ 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.

This letter from Deb Blez, a French teacher in the states attracted my attention and made me realize how many difficulties there are for someone learning English...

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is "UP."

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we wake in the morning, why do we wake UP?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing:

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable of the proper uses of UP, look UP the word in the dictionary. In a desk size dictionary, the word up, takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and definitions add UP to about thirty.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP.

When it rains, it wets UP the earth. When it doesn't rain for a while, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP,

for now my time is UP, so.............

I'll shut UP.


Deb Blaz, French teacher
Angola High School,
Angola, Indiana USA