Winning Simile Compares Pie Crust With Plaster Cast

The time is at hand - and a pleasant time it is - to announce winners in the Great Simile Contest of 1994. In Section One, we sought similes for something having to do with solidity. The $100 prize goes to W.F. Roberts of Otego, N.Y., who wrote of a woman "whose pie crusts were like plaster casts."

In Section Two, we invited similes for something having to do with laughter. A $100 prize goes to Arthur R. Miller of Akron, N.Y., who imagined a happy woman: "If her laugh could fill a glass you would call it champagne."

Section Three was for elementary and middle schools. The $100 prize goes to Marie Franckowiak's seventh-grade English class at Kenmore Middle School in Kenmore, N.Y. Section Four was for high schools. In a close contest Stephanie Stewart's sophomore class in English at Amelia High School, Batavia, Ohio, edged out Texas Military Institute in San Antonio.

The 1994 contest attracted roughly 4,300 nonstudent participants who submitted two similes each. We had class entries from 282 schools with 8,070 student participants. Similes came from U.S. Army schools in Germany, and from a missionary school in Venezuela. Similes? I looked at 16,700 of them.

A couple of threads ran through the contest as a whole. It was impossible to miss an aversion to politicians and to government in general. Hundreds of entries were to this effect: as flimsy as a politician's promise . . . the politician's platform was about as solid as a two-minute egg.

An unkind cut came from a seventh-grader at St. Peter's Lutheran School in Vincennes, Ind.: "Teaching an old dog new tricks is as hard as teaching Hillary Clinton to let the president be president."

On a lighter note, it appeared evident that schoolchildren also have an aversion to meat loaf and fruitcake, and to almost anything cooked by an older sister. "My grandma's fruitcake is as hard as bricks." "My sister's biscuits are harder than hockey pucks." "The cafeteria meat loaf is harder than cinderblocks and tastes about the same."

Hyenas! How did the idea of a laughing hyena get so firmly planted? At least 500 entries relied upon this hapless beast for similes of striking mediocrity. From Summit, Ill.: Girls at a slumber party "giggled like a herd of laughing hyenas." From Saginaw, Mich.: "My laughter is as wild as a hyena." From Magnolia, Ohio: "The kids laughed as hard as hyenas." We had herniated hyenas, hyperactive hyenas, happy hyenas, mocking hyenas, and a hyena with hiccups. These 500 entries, mind you, came from participants who never in their lives have seen or heard a live hyena. So it goes.

At least 200 participants thought of laughter as contagious - as contagious as a runny nose in a nursery school, as contagious as the common cold, and from a fifth-grader in Chicago, "the children's laughter was as contagious as diarrhea," a dismal thought.

Several entries from children carried a poignant note: "as solid as my parents' marriage used to be" . . . "My dad used to laugh like a big bird, but now he only quarrels with mom."

To judge this year's Great Simile Contest I set aside the thought of drafting professional writers or teachers. Instead I called in three friends who have been avid and eclectic readers for the past 65 years. They knew a good simile when they hit one.

(COPYRIGHT 1994 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE)