Humorous Essays Based on students' memories
"All have died
except for those who are alive, and those whom we remember"Confucius
- From the author
- Review of a book by O.P.Syedyshev "The Guys"
- Copyright
The Guys
Essay 1. How I became a student
Essay 2. Mini-dorm
Essay 3. Arkasha
Essay 4. Ditto
Essay 5. Vagram
Essay 6. Eugene
Essay 7. Slava Sizikov
Essay 8. Batya
Essay 9. Tolik and Vagram
Essay 10. Ilgam and Otari
Essay 11. Petya Kozlov and a pipe
Essay 12. Golubev and Sasha Plokhikh
Essay 13. Serezha Sherbinin
Essay 14. Operative surgery exam
Essay 15. Striptease of Leada Syrkasheva
Essay 17. Pseudo wedding
Essay 18. How I was a trade union organi...
Essay 19. Anatomy
Essay 20. #118 Group
Essay 21. RW
Essay 22. Brothers Romashov
Essay 23. Pharmakology
Essay 24. Sambo
Essay 25. Dimka the Wine-Maker
Essay 26. Brewery
Essay 27. Delicacy
Essay 28. Muster
Essay 29. Festival
Essay 30. Cant wait to get married
Essay 31. Beer at lectures
Essay 32. Examinations
Essay 33. The murder will out
Essay 34. An accident
Essay 35. Vendetta
Essay 36. A lesson to remember for a lif...
Essay 38. A wedding ring
Essay 40. How different all of them are
Essay 41. Product #2
Essay 42. A guitar
Essay 43. A stranger in medicine
Essay 44. Oh, sports - You are life!
Essay 45. Canalis nasolacrimalis
Essay 46. Young Communist League (Komsom...
Essay 47. Unus - one out of five
Essay 48. His Majesty photographer
Essay 49. Three tablets of aminazine
Essay 50. "Nothern Lights"
Essay 51. Gentlemen of luck
Essay 52. Brother-2
Essay 53. Three thanks
Essay 54. Superstitious Beliefs
Essay 56. Satanic Grin
Essay 57. 21 Gurgles
Essay 58. Triplets
Essay 59. Pilau on Issyk Kul
Essay 60. Is speculation business or not...
Essay 61. Bitter Sugar
Essay 63. Cream Of Wheat
Essay 64. Feeling Of Pride
Essay 65. Was It Love?
Essay 67. Examination Paper #13
Essay 68. The Devil of Adventurism
Essay 69. Sketching Characters
Essay 70. An Excursion
Essay 71. Winter examinations
Essay 72. Stierlitz is no match for them...
Essay 73. Inhale through your mouth, ple...
Essay 74. Hitler kaputt!
Essay 75. A second-year student
Essay 76. Mistakes should be paid for!
Essay 77. Four letters
Essay 78. Prince of Imereti
Essay 79. There are too few workers and ...
Essay 80. A pood of salt
Essay 81. A Prankster
Essay 82. Let's Man The Barricades!
Essay 83. Now A Kiss!
Essay 84. Briefs
Essay 85. A Miracle!
Essay 86. A mouse!.. in a hairdo? How ve...
Essay 87. A Born Obstetrician
Essay 88. International Children's Day
Essay 91. Here is the one for you, fasci...
Essay 94. A sight for sore eyes
Essay 96. REAR
Essay 97. And you are a gambler, Paramos...
Essay 98. An Ode to Pilav
Essay 99. Always hungry
Essay 100. Dudes
Essay 114. The night before
Essay 119. An autograph
Essay 130. Déjà vu
Essay 137. Twelve
Essay 141. A password is needed
Essay 142. Home brew
Essay 143. Mind what you say
Essay 144. Experimenters
Essay 145. An autograph
Essay 146. Hydrocele
Essay 147. Clip on the back of the head
Essay 148. Al Qasr
Essay 149. We were optimists...
Essay 150. Despotic and wilful person
Essay 151. With a sickle at the balls
Essay 152. Liquidation
Essay 153. Resonance
Essay 154. Shock therapy
Essay 155. Good luck of Victor Kiss
Essay 156. Herd instinct
Essay 157. Cond'omer
Essay 159. The Gypsy Baron
Essay 160. SI system
Essay 161. Foie gras
Essay 162. Divine disposition
Essay 163. Chizhik-Pyzhik*
Essay 164. Culinary terrorist act
Essay 172. At the world's end
Essay 173. Rupture
After graduation
Essay 37 Whyte chrysanthemums
Essay 55 We Are the Eleventh! So What?
Essay 62 Feinzilberg's Mistake
Essay 90 Betwixt and Between...
Essay 92 Those who are drowning are to ...
Essay 93 People, be happy
Essay 116 Here's a fine how d'ye do!
Essay 131 Feminine logic
Essay 132 Bimbo and, pardon, balls
Essay 133 Forty years later
Essay 134 Product #2 again
Essay 136 Striptease of Fomitch
Essay 138 Love and gastric ulcer
Essay 139 A victim of essays
Essay 140 Sleep!
Essay 158 Help-it's a panic
Essay 165 A Hen
Essay 166 The first vacation
Essay 167 Tails
Essay 168 PEA
Essay 169 Sochi
Essay 170 VOLGA
Essay 171 Muriuk
Essay 174 Bear's disease
Essay 175 An escape
Kitchen talks
Essay 39. A brick on the top of the head
Essay 89. Guriev Porridge (or conversati...
Essay 113. Prosperity of Russia
Essay 135. A Prescription
Beyond the Horizon
Essay 16. Its a small world
Essay 66. Paris, Paris...
Essay 95. Milan is a Lucrative City
Essay 102. A Look and Something
Essay 103. Tango 'Magnolia'
Essay 110. Buddha is smiling
Essay 128. Red Light District
Essay 52. Brother-2
Of course, all of those who came to study at the medical institute had different motives. For instance, in my case, a surgeon saved my thumb on the right hand from being amputated. That happened when I was in the seventh grade, so even then I knew that I would become a doctor, a surgeon, too, and would save people's fingers, hands, legs and lives. Perhaps other students had similar reasons. Of course, diseases one's own and of family members are a very imperative motivation. Though, there were those, who had been made or persuaded by relatives; and I wrote about one of such cases in the essay "A Stranger in Medicine". And for someone, on the contrary, family tradition was the main reason of making the decision. Someone simply liked a white doctor's smock, but the inner call to do good, as Mother Teresa taught, became the main cause of coming to the medical institute.I would like to tell you how Zhenya Romashov became a medic- student, and later his brother Kostya. And not because I was a friend of both of them, just their motivation was the most typical. Before entering the institute Yevgeniy had had education in veterinary, and he found a job of an X-ray photography laboratory assistant at a Prokopievsk traumatological hospital. He worked in Prokopievsk under the direction of Faina Samsonovna Golubkova, mother of Marik Golubkov, our group mate.

By his life convictions Zhenya was a very responsible guy, the words "This must be done, Zhenya" said by someone he respected were unarguable. He was ready to shift mountains. If he was asked to, he worked two or three shifts, even more to that, he used to stay in the X-ray lab for several days in a row. And at that time the equipment was Soviet. Of course, it was drummed into our heads that our medical equipment was "the best medical equipment in the world". And in spite of being the best, it went out of order, too. So in the X-ray lab there was a case of a malfunction of a radiation tube. And who got the radiation sickness?

Y.D.Romashov
I want to step aside and give a credit to Yevgeniy's tact. We were very close friends, as it is said we shared the last piece of bread, but it was only recently that I learned that Zhenya was well received in Y.D. Logachev's family, that he had relations of friendship with Faina Samsonovna's family.

Associate professors
F.S.Golubkova and A.N.Frumgarts
So, Zhenya Romashov was a medical institute student, and Konstantin was preparing to finish his tenth year at a secondary school in 1967. His friends were older, some of them had served in the Army, and some were going to serve there. At that time among the young and people in general there was a clear-cut conviction that "if one did not serve in the Army, he was not a man then". That was drummed into our heads in such a way that even young girls inquired, why their intended husband did not serve in the armed forces? So Kostya was about to go to the Army. Fresh air of Kirghizia, its fruit and vegetables together with regular work out made his muscles so noticeable, that girls started looking at him with admiration.
Kostya's parents did not interfere in his choice of his way in life, but Yevgeniy (he was 13 years older than Kostya) could not allow himself to stay indifferent. He loved Kostya very much and wished good to him, so he started persistently advising Kostya to enter the medical institute in Kemerovo. And his arguments were ferroconcrete: after the graduation Kostya would have a rank of a medical service lieutenant; he had to apply to the Dentistry Department as it had a five-year academic program, and Kostya would graduate simultaneously with him, Yevgeniy, after the institute he was free to specialize and then become an anesthesiologist, or at least a dentist-surgeon, which meant plastic surgeries to turn ugly guys into handsome ones. The strongest argument Zhenya saved to be the last one - Oleg Syedyshev studied in Kemerovo! So if before that Kostya was a bit hesitant, then after the final argument he was determined to go to Kemerovo to enter the Medical Institute. And in conclusion Zhenya said: "If you do not enter the institute, you will go to the Army".

In spite of the summertime Kemerovo welcomed the brothers with drizzling fall rain. The wind was blowing from the direction of karbolit, and there was the smell of phenols in the air. And above their heads there was flying the well-known "fox' tail". It was later when Kostya was explained that that was nitric dioxide, and after its reaction with water during the rain, there was nitrous acid dripping down from the sky on heads of "carefree people of Kemerovo". Though it was not concentrated, yet that was the acid. Kostya who had grown up in Kirghizia, where the sky was blue and deep, the air the purest, the glittering of glaciers was blinding, where water both artesian or of the glaciers was tasty and had no chlorine or scale, was in shock, and he had treacherous thoughts: "Ouch, perhaps I will apply to the medical institute in Frunze after the service in the Army. And now I will fail at least a Russian Language examination...". Though, when he looked at Zhenka, he even got scared if he had said that aloud. Zhenya had short fuses.
Then Zhenya brought his brother into the house in Gertsen street, which was in Kirovskiy district. I had already written about the house in the essay "A Mini Dorm".
From uncle Vasya, the landlord, Zhenya rented a big heat insulated for winter mansard, and locked his younger brother there every day. Zhenya brought chemistry and physics text books for university applicants, a couple of notebooks, a handful of pencils and entrance examination papers of the previous academic year to the mansard.

Uncle Vasya had three boys; there was one year's difference of age between them; the boys were a bit younger than Kostya. Their father was very strict with them. They used to come to Kostya quite often, took one window glass out, and Kostya gave them money to buy him cigarettes "Pamir" or "Prima"; he paid twice more than a packet cost, 25 - 30 kopeks was the guys' "business", as they were "businessmen". And then separated by the iron bars they were smoking and talking "about life". The boys sympathized with Kostya, and he - with them.

Kostya Romashov

The plot for the story was kindly given by K.D. Romashov.
31 August, 2011.
© Copyright: Oleg Syedyshev, 2012
Publishing licence #21204260413
Translated by Viktoria Potykinato content ↑