By Tim Sanders

Have you ever asked yourself, "Just what is the difference between a simile and a metaphor?" Well if you haven’t, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Even here in Cherokee County, Alabama, that is information which might someday come in handy.

Let’s say next Sunday you and Deacon Bunspackle get into a heated discussion regarding free will versus predestination. Let’s say that one thing leads to another, and in a moment of uncharacteristic candor you tell the good deacon that you believe he is like a festering carbuncle on the left buttock of the body of believers. With me so far?

Now let’s further speculate that Deacon Bunspackle immediately balls up his tremendously large fist, glares at you, and asks, "Did you just say I was a festering carbuncle on the left buttock of the body of believers? And if you did, how ‘bout if I was to smite thee?" Well, not wishing to be smote, you may simply smile and respond, "Why no, Edgar, I certainly didn’t say that. That would have been a metaphor. What I said was that you were LIKE a festering carbuncle on the left buttock of the body of believers, which is only a simile."

"Oh. Okay, then," Deacon Bunspackle replies, and you resume your discussion. Metaphors are more dangerous than similes, and that is all you need to know.

Here are some examples of similes and metaphors used by students, journalists, and other lunatics. They are not good examples, but they are the best I could come up with, given the poor quality of students, journalists, and lunatics I have at my disposal:

Bob and Charlotte passed like two ships in the night, and for a moment, as they navigated the narrow Straits of Intimacy, their massive hulls scraped together, resulting in violent shaking amidships and loud cries of "all hands on deck," after which he fired up his boilers and headed for the Peaceful Harbor of Forgetfulness, and she steamed off to a Tupperware party in Gadsden.

Claire saw Raymond as a magnificent oak tree, only without the bark. But alas, they had no future, for to him she was but a lowly, dense St. John’s Wort shrub with aphids, badly in need of pruning.

Although Denise thought she was still in the catbird seat, Carl let her know in no uncertain terms that his worm had turned.
 

She had lips like two sweet Bing cherries, only without the pits and stems–and also more oblong.
 

When he first saw the Maserati, his eyes spun in his head like the rear wheels of a ‘56 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, his irises shining like fine chrome hubcaps, his pupils like regal medallions, unimpeded by the black clamp-on fender skirts which were his eyelids.

Like a shaggy, leather-clad buffalo, she left Paco’s Chili Parlor and strode slowly to her Harley Tourer with a rumbling "potato, potato, potato" exhaust note.
 

Claudia felt as though, with but one letter missing in the perplexing Wheel of Fortune puzzle which was her life, she needed desperately to purchase a vowel, but Pat Sajak had walked off the set in a contract dispute.

It has often been said that the nut does not fall far from the tree, and Ambassador Kennedy’s offspring were proof positive that his nuts had certainly fallen in the shadow of his own expansive limbs.

In that great wheat field which is life, Lester felt he was but a slender, golden brown stalk, while his fiancée, Thelma, was a huge, diesel-powered 615 Series International Harvester combine bearing down on him, ready to rip him from the warm soil, shake the kernels from his beard, and leave his broken chaff lying in her wake.

McEnroe’s tennis elbow proved to be his Achilles heel.

His mother’s final words were deeply imbedded into his brain, like roofing nails into an old asphalt shingle.
 

Although Brandi had performed her flaming baton routine onstage since she was fourteen, it was just last night that she caught fire and shot immediately to the top in the talent competition.

Her ample bottom yearned to break free from its denim prison, but it knew that after hours of solitary confinement, it could not trust itself on the outside. Even with electronic monitoring, the danger to society would be too great.
 

Like Punxsutawney Phil, Leonard emerged from the dim bathroom after two hours, saw his reflection in the dining room mirror, and joked to the other party goers that there would be six more weeks of winter. His laughter soon faded, however, when he noticed an eight-foot piece of toilet paper trailing from his waistband.
 

Cecil realized that in the vast smorgasbord of life he was at best a stainless steel bin of tuna casserole. Tiffany, on the other hand, was a succulent prime rib roast in brown mushroom gravy. Sadly, like prime rib and tuna casserole Tiffany and Cecil did not belong on the same plate.

When life deals you a bad hand–say two sixes, a ten, a four and a deuce–make lemonade.
 

Their eyes, which were the windows to their souls, made contact across the crowded room, and their feet soon followed.

Chuck saw Andrea and Jerome gazing lovingly at each other across the table. He swiftly put two and two together, calculated that three was a crowd, and left.
 

Sgt. Joe Friday knew he was but a solitary 2.5-horsepower submersible sludge pump in the teeming septic tank that was Los Angeles

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If I-75, I-85, and I-20 were the three major arteries leading to the heart of Atlanta, then Peachtree-Dunwoody Road was most certainly the superior vena cava. All led to I-285, which had been constructed as a kind of $90 million, four-lane coronary bypass in the late 1960s due to critical fatty buildup in the city’s highway system.
 

In conclusion, just remember that the metaphor is the epoxy which holds the fragile framework of our unfinished thought projects together in the wood shop which is our mind. And while the simile isn’t exactly epoxy, it’s a lot like it.