30-Day Blogging Challenge

Metaphors be with you Aug 10

Prompt: "Tell us about someone in your life, or someone else's life, who uses metaphors in an extreme manner. For example: An old Aunt used to always say "You're in the right church, but the wrong pew", if you were looking for something and were close to finding it."

My english teacher for my senior year in high school had a metaphor habit.  She was a nice lady, but seemed ill equipped to handle a classroom full of hormonal kids with behavioral issues.  She tried to relate to us, but that didn't work out for her; she was always a funny little figure with quaint sayings. 

"Your brains are sponges, sucking up the salt water of knowledge that flows from the river of my words."

"Homework is boot camp, and it will prepare you for the career of your life; will you be a general or a private?"

If we had had Facebook or twitter she might have been infamous, but she was just a school legend, an inside joke.  Sometimes she'd receive a gift from a student:  "Donuts are fat pills. Prescriptions for high cholesterol."

She tried to counsel us.  It had to be obvious to her that so many of us were high, that we were absolutely uninterested in the lesson plans she had prepared.  She cared for us, "little lambs who were being led astray by bad influences," and "poisoned by the filth on television," not to mention our brains, "smooth babies' bottoms unmarred by any concerns for our futures."

I wish I could remember more of her wonderful words, the few I still have are spots of sunshine in my mind, bright reflections of a simpler, yet more dangerous time.