English teachers have a tough job

    The e-mail says these gems are taken from actual high school essays and collected by English teachers across the country for their own amusement.
    Here’s hoping these authors don’t line up for my job.
    Although on closer examination, they sound like stuff that finds its way onto ESPN “SportsCenter.”
    Here goes.
    “Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a ThighMaster.
    “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.
    “She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
    “Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
    “He was as tall as a 6-foot, 3-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 machine.
    “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 p.m. instead of 7:30.
    “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.
    “He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
    “Even in his last years, Granddad 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 young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
    I feel as safe as .... whatever.