Collection of Memorable Humorous Stories (7)

The university's biggest scare

Maung Keng Kyat (Letpandan)

As the university nears the opening of the school year, the central campuses of Inwa, Sagaing, Pinya, Bago, and Thaton, as well as Shwebo, Dagon (formerly Uttara and Wellington) campuses, and the engineering and teaching campuses of the country and Tagaung campuses, filled with the sounds of shoes, laughter, and the sounds of music from the bathrooms, have become a source of joy.

In addition, the Inya and Thin Tan (now Thiri) neighborhoods, where only young women, young men, and young women (well...they are not yet young) live, are filled with the sounds of various vehicles, laughter, whining, and snoring. (Oh...what sounds are there left? If anyone hears them, please tell me. Oh...oh, there are also the sounds of gossip...

Yes. I didn't hear it. It started to come to life, adorned with various sounds. My novel begins when the above-mentioned temple started to come to life.

Well..when the school opened in 1953, we had to face this strange situation. The story goes like this, if we were to retell the story from the beginning, we lived in the two corner rooms on the left side of the middle staircase of the middle floor of one of the main buildings (there are six rooms in between, that is, the corner on the left and the corner on the right). If you look at the top of the middle staircase, it was the third room, and the room next to us, so there were only four rooms in total. (Oh, if the readers don’t understand, it must be because of my poor handwriting.) We were not many. There were only five of us. My brother and I lived in the corner room on the left side of the middle staircase. (The name Ko Labob is a bit strange, so I need to explain it. He got this name because he was very talkative and was known as "Labob" by his friends. "Labob" is not derived from the word "laba", so it is not a person who is rich, so I have to explain it because I am afraid that it will be found with three letters.) Maung Klong Kyaung means that he speaks and acts in a vulgar manner.

In the corner room, exactly 6 rows away from us, there is a visiting scholar from Kunchankon village (I will not deny that he wrote the Shwechangga in the poem written by Min Thuwan), called Alaungpapa, who is a poet. He is a person who has poetically removed the last letter of Alaungpapa's name and made it his own name, but he is not a relative. He is not a novice, but is still studying in the last year of the science course (if you are late in class, you think you have to sit in the last seat). He is a person who has memorized the Yatu poems of famous poets such as Shin Maharatthasara, Shin Mahathilawansa, Shin Uttama Kyaw, Shin Om Nyo, Adu Min Nyo, Navaday Gyi, Nat Shin Naung, and U Sa. Since no one has come to share the same room with him, he is still living alone.

There is a prince who lives one room to the left of our room. He comes from a place rich in diamonds and is as handsome as the main character, Myint Aung, so we call him Ko Myint Aung. The comrade who is sitting next to us in the back row is easily remembered as “Ko Myint Pyone”. He is one of a kind. When he smiles, he is different from others. His smile is like the one his girlfriend would follow, like the one he follows. Hehehe... (Please be patient).

Oh, so where is the story going, oh... it hasn't even started yet. Now, please be patient. The story has started. Here it is. When I moved to the monastery, the old comrades were already there, so I was sitting in the sun. The old man, Alaungpaya, was the one who moved to the upper floor this year, so he was quite friendly with us. However, because of Ko Labo, we soon became close to Alaungpaya.

Ko La Bo and Alaung Pagoda are the same age. Alaung Pagoda is the main character in this story, so let's learn a little about him. He is very scared. (If Alaung Pagoda knew about this, he would die of shame. I think he would be in the same place as the gods.) He is also very angry. (Oh, please be patient.) His attitude is poetic. However, when it comes to clothes, he wears a long-sleeved green shirt and a large red Bangkok long-sleeved shirt, and it's like he's partially submerged in a red dye. It's painful to say, hehe. Alaung Pagoda once had to stay in the bathroom for 7 days and 7 nights without urinating because there was a black ghost in it. He was so brave, knowing that he was so scared, we scared him and told him not to do anything, and this little story became a story.

One night, the five of us had a big talk in Alaungpaya’s room with green tea and roasted bean salad. We told him, “There is definitely a ghost in this room. Last year, a comrade of mine stayed in this room and woke up at night and saw a person sitting at the foot of the bed. He accidentally turned on the light and the window and door wouldn’t open. He suddenly disappeared. He couldn’t stay in this room anymore and had to move to another room. If you wake up at midnight, you will see a ghost sitting under the tree in front of the school building. There is a ghost in the bathroom of our dormitory. The small bridge connecting Thaton and Inwa dormitories was used as a morgue by the Japanese during the Japanese era. On moonless nights, you can often hear a loud scream from Inya Lake at around 1 am. We told him a mix of yes and no, until he was scared.

You can tell if he is scared or not by looking at his eyes. If his eyes are big and round and his eyebrows (not as thick as others. There are only one or two) are growing, you can tell that he is really scared. At about 11 o'clock, we went back to our room and he went to sleep. He begged me to let him sleep. But we said to him, "Oh, you are so old, are you still scared? You are not a child. Go to sleep." His big eyes were like glass marbles, they were round. Even now, I want to laugh thinking about it.

So we went back to our room and went to sleep. We hadn't slept for very long, I think it was around 11:30. He started knocking on our room from outside and woke us up. We were still in a daze, and we asked, "What happened, my dear, did a thief break into your room?" "No, it's not a thief. I'm scared because I'm haunted," we said, shivering and whimpering like a cat that has been doused in ice water in Pyatho.