Syedyshev Oleg
Syedyshev Oleg

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Humorous Essays Based on students' memories

"All have died
except for those who are alive, and those whom we remember"Confucius

Essay 31. Beer at lectures

Of course, we were not the first ones who invented the way to make lectures briefer and more interesting. It just happened that way in life, that some courses were interesting and the lectures, who read them, were wonderful. Though, there were courses, which were delivered by professors, who were, to put it mildly, not that good, and they taught even very interesting material in a boring and tedious way.

And what was typical of those courses was that those lecturers had the strictest penalties for the students for non-attendance. They were the professors who brought their lectures' attendance tables to examinations and asked questions on the topics which had been missed by a student. Of course, those professors were not liked. Their lectures were attended, not to receive knowledge, but a tick in front of one's last name. Yes, there was one more thing, those professors called over the roll at random during their lectures. People attended those courses. And during the lectures everyone was doing what he or she pleased.

For example, Petya Kozlov brought beer "Zhiguleovskoie" to that kind of lectures,


and sometimes it was "Taeozhnoe".



To our luck, there was no need to go anywhere far away to get it. When we were in our first year, beer was sold in the cafeteria, which was in the basement of the main building. Then beer vanished from that cafeteria. Though, next to the main building of the institute, literally one hundred - one hundred and fifty meters away from it there were Russian baths (sauna). At the baths' cafeteria beer never ceased. So, one could easily load a briefcase with two-three-four bottles of beer to make a lecture much more interesting. Petya took off a pipe of his phonendoscope and put one of its ends into a beer bottle (the bottle was in his briefcase), he put the second end of the pipe into his mouth, and covered the pipe with his hand. Do you remember Rodin's Thinker? He looked very much alike. Petya used to say that with the beer he started enjoying the lectures much more. It was cool among us to change rubber pipes of a phonendoscope, those blue-black or red, for the tubes of an artificial kidney or disposable systems for blood transfusion. Though both things were the hard-to-get-ones, the students managed to fetch them and replaced the rubber pipes on their phonendoscopes. So, Petya Kozlov said, when he had replaced the pipes, that the lectures became more interesting, because there was no smack of rubber any more, which was felt because of the reaction of a pipe with beer. One should notice, that Petya's followers quickly emerged. I will not tell about the other, but in our group Volodya Kartashov made quick runs over to the Russian baths before the lecture as well. Sometimes Slava Sizikov and Zhenya Romashov joined him, but that was very seldom, only when they quarreled with one another. When they did not quarrel, they had an interesting occupation, too.

Zhenya and Slavka played Scrabble. Remember, that game? One took a checked piece of paper, drew a square - ten checks by ten, wrote a word with four letters in the middle, that there were two consonants and two vowels, for instance "pipe ". Then the players taking turns were adding a letter to make a new word of the set of letters. The more letters a player managed to write in the word, the more points he got. It looks like a simple game, but the excitement it caused was no joke. Once Zhenya, after he inserted the next letter, gladly wrote a word "rasolnik" (meat soup with pickled cucumbers) and added to his score nine points. Slava calmly started explaining to Zhenya that the word "rassolnik" had two letters "s". In vein! How could Zhenya lose such a real victory; and they played on lunch at the canteen (the one, who lost, was supposed to buy lunch for the winner); it was practically like Las-Vegas or Monte Carlo. To put it short, Zhenya absolutely did not want to concede. To anyone, who was invited by Slavka as a consultant, Zhenya demonstrated his fist and menacingly said: "Mind your own business!"

So when Slava categorically refused to recognize Yevgeniy's victory, because there were exactly two letters "s" in the word "rassolnik", Zhenka lost his temper and gave Slavka a solid punch with his fist saying: "Take your change out of that! Two "s" in "rassolnik"!" Slava even fell off his chair. Zhenya punched Slavka not in his face, but on the shoulder, and to their good luck, it was the break time already. That was why the two following lectures Zhenya and Slava made a quick run to the Russian baths, though they sat on different sides from Petya and Kartash.

Well, and I was a representative of a different way of spending time at the lectures. Our group did something for future us. For instance, I spoiled my parents by sending them letters every day; and they received my letters practically daily.

So, I was writing those letters for future use at the lectures. I wrote as many letters as I had time for. So in my briefcase there was always a reserve of letters to be mailed and make my parents happy by hearing from me. I made the professor-lecturer happy, too, by my presence at the lecture.

july 21, 2011

© Copyright: Oleg Syedyshev, 2012
Publishing licence #21202101848

Translated by Viktoria Potykinato content ↑


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