[Bob Putnam]

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 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.

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog
makes just before it 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.

The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're
on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m.
instead of 7:30.

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

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.

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, 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.

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.

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.

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.

She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.

Merry Christmas!