Syedyshev Oleg
Syedyshev Oleg

Humorous essays
Guestbook Contacts

Humorous Essays Based on students' memories

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

Essay 153. Resonance

Believe me, I ask you very much indeed. It’s not my fault that I again and again come back to those last names. And what I am saying, not to the last names, but to the people, to the professors.



It happens so that I’ve written the essay “Golubev and Sasha Plokhikh”, the twelfth one about the unforgettable Boris Feodorovitch Golubev, a professor of Social Sciences department, a very clever man and boozer, and a wonderful lecturer. Yes, at his lectures we, the graduates of Kemerovo medical institute of 1972, did anything we pleased, played sea battle, ouths and crosses, and the most reckless even played cards. Golubev B.F. lived near the institute. He had four boys. His wife worked at a cloakroom at the Sanitary-Hygiene building, and sometimes he could be met at the cloakroom, when he was substituting for his wife, who had left on some urgent business home. We, students, usually felt shy at the meetings, and he helped us feel at ease saying, when you got married, we would see what tricks you would play. However his lectures were interesting, he was reading them the way they were remembered. Just tell me how we, greenhorn students, could not remember the following confidence of Boris Feodorovitch he shared with us at his class. Once at his lecture he was explaining, I do not remember what exactly, something about relativity. So he gave the following example; I am telling it from his name: “Once during a break between lectures I came home really quickly, because of necessity. It was extremely hot, and I was very thirsty. In the kitchen on a windowsill I noticed a bottle of beer, though not a full one. I was grateful to my wife, that she had left half a bottle for me, drank it in one gulp and hurried back to the institute. In the evening Zina asked me, whether I had seen a bottle on the windowsill. I replied that I’d seen it, and thanked her for the beer, that I had drunk it and put the bottle into a closet. And she started scolding me, as that was our son’s urine she had prepared to take for a test.”


There were the maxims he used at his lectures stating that everything was relative.

B.F.Golubev

B.F.Golubev



So after I posted the first essay in the internet, I started receiving e-mails from readers; and they were sending me plots of stories about Igor Victorovitch Golubev (see essay “Winter Examinations”) as well. He was a good man, an excellent specialist, but the demon drink did not spare him too. What we did at the exam conducted by Boris Feodorovitch, when we poured vodka instead of water into a carafe for him, students did more than once at examinations conducted by Igor Victorovitch. And everything was just wonderful: the students and Igor Victorovitch were satisfied. Irina Gulnyashkina’s group was aware of all that and prepared for an exam correspondingly. At the beginning of the exam, when the first students were already with their examination papers and were preparing, to be more exact, closely watching Golubev, when he would check the carafe. Well, it should be said that it did not take them long. Golubev made a couple of rounds along the class room, approached a desk and carelessly, as if unwillingly, poured about twenty-thirty grams from the carafe into a glass and took a sip. And there one had to see Igor Viktorovitch. On his face, like in kaleidoscope, there were changing various expressions from expectation to complete satisfaction, and then, as if he remembered something, he carefully closed the carafe and said to the students: “I will be back soon” and quickly went out of the room, leaving the students by themselves without any control.


So there it started, guys were literally in panic… and they poured vodka into a sink. They assumed that Golubev left to bring the administration. The room was small, and smell of vodka was hanging thick in the air. In five minutes Golubev came back. He had something wrapped in his hands. Golubev came in and breathed in via his quivering nostrils the air. Obviously he liked the smell in the room. He slowly, obviously prolonging the pleasure opened the carafe, put the stopper, which was also faceted like the carafe, on a small plate, slowly trickling started pouring into the glass, also faceted, but without a rim, the contents of the carafe. When he poured about one hundred grams, he with no hurry put the carafe back on the small plate and put the stopper on it. The guys were watching him mesmerized. In their mind there was rushing one and the same thought: “What will happen now?” Nevertheless physics are right by having proved the resonance phenomenon. In that case resonance got manifested itself – electromagnet waves of each of them got overlaid, and the silent question: “What will happen now” was as if loudly pealing in the small room. Golubev was also influenced by the resonance. Anxiety was also reflected in his face, everybody saw that. He grabbed the glass and drank what was in it in one gulp. Again there was a kaleidoscope of feelings on his face: disappointment, offence, anger… The professor put the glass on the table with such a bang, that everybody thought it would be smashed into smithereens. Golubev was smart, he quickly estimated the situation: “You got scared, idiots, and poured it into the sink, and I went to buy meat pies”. So he started conducting the exam. Frankly speaking, it was an exaggeration to talk about his conducting of the exam; he was giving unsatisfactory grades to everybody one after another.


And it is true, in those days, in Kemerovo they were selling very tasty round fried meat pies. Those who studied or lived in Kemerovo remember that there were many kiosks, equipped with big frying pans, where meat pies were fried. Back then they cost 19 kopeks, but their taste was worthy a whole ruble.

29 April, 2012

© Copyright: Oleg Syedyshev, 2012
Publishing licence #214040300507

Translated by Viktoria Potykinato content ↑


Copyright © 2001-2024
oleg.syedyshev.name
All rights reserved