Good Old Days by KHON MIN SET

Good old days
By KHON MIN SET

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              There is a place I often go to in my mind. I sometimes get there even in my dream. I am always brought there by coincidence or I intentionally go there by myself whenever I get lonely. It is the only place, where there is no selfishness, a cause of worry and fear but just aroma of the freshness of youth …

(i)

                “Did you do the homework you were assigned last weekend?” A loud and clear shout of our class teacher made the noisy classroom quiet as if the blaring sound from the loudspeaker stopped when the electricity went out! It also wiped out my attention to the keys or switches I had drawn on the bench in front of where I sat. Those keys controlled the school of ship in which all the teachers and students were on board and it usually took us on tours from 9 am to 3 in the afternoon. I was the captain of that ship! It had been running safely under my control since I was in grade one!

                When I looked at my neighbor, Nga Pay, sitting next to me, the thunderous voice of our class teacher had already made his perpetual drowsy eyes wider. Chit Ko, Mg Bat Man, stopped drawing attention from a girl who was sitting on the right side of the aisle near his seat and looked back at me, meaning what we should do then. Su Thinzar Htet, a bookworm, hid the comic book she was reading before the teacher entered the classroom. She turned around and gaped at the teacher by the time she heard about homework.

                “Well, if you haven’t done it yet, come out and line up in front of the class!” commanded the teacher. Finally, the super heroes of the fourth grade stood up in a queue to receive bopping as usual. In fact, we were bright enough to do school lessons but we were a bit lazy to do homework!

(ii)

         All of us, Nga Pay, Chit Ko, Su Thinzar Htet, and I, were fourth graders at a small town. We went to the same school and we were in the same class. We became bosom friends at school. We had been together inside and outside the school since we first became friends. On school days off, we always got together to play or read comic books in a certain tree.

       Actually, Nga Pay’s real name was Kyaw Min Win. But, everyone called him Nga Pay according to his appearance and his clothes. His school uniform usually got dirty earlier than those of ours since he was more playful than the rest. Besides, what made his face dirty was that he usually wiped the beads of sweat from his face with his unclean clothes! Chit Ko was called Mg Bat Man because he liked to hung himself upside down with his both legs on a thick branch of the tree like a sleeping bat whenever we played in a tree. Let alone being angry at the nickname, he seemed to be satisfied with it! Su Thinzar Htet is the most unusual girl! She could do all kinds of activities that the boys did – when we climbed the trees and jumped down onto the pile of paddy husks under the tamarind tree, she was one of the jumpers and when we sneaked out to swim, she came along. But, she did not swim. She remained under a shady tree on the bank of the lake to have fun throwing stones at us in the water if we took long swimming!

   

       All of my playmates came from a big family but me. As I was the only and lonely  son of my parents, I loved them very much as my own brothers and sister. Most of my time did not pass without them – we went to school together, we climbed trees together, and we always forgot to do homework together as well!

(iii)

                “Hey, you guys, what do you want to be when you get older?” asked the bookworm, shaking up and down the branch she was sitting on as if she were on a seesaw. No one answered and kept on getting our heads in the newly- borrowed book we had borrowed. “I will answer if you share me your snack!” the bat man suddenly answered from the top of the tree. “How gluttonous you are!” she shouted to him. I had shared a lot with you.”
“I want to be a comedian! So, I can make every audience laugh at my joke and make them happy.” Nga Pay replied and grimaced the way the comedian did in the movie we had seen.
“I’ll be a big … big … bat … when I am older and I’ll bite all girls who don’t pay any attention to my tricks in the class!!” replied the bat man even though he got no share of snack form the bookworm again. And then, he hung his legs on a branch and laid himself down to the ground.
“Good idea! but, don’t bite my toe!” She paused for a while, turned to me and asked me. “And you, Min Min? What is your ambition?”
“I’d like to be a very strong elephant so that I can carry my parents and you all on my back!!” then I started to sound like an elephant as loudly as I could.
“Hey … Mo Mo … once more!!!” all of them cheered and clapped their hands in joy. “You should also answer your own question, Mi Bookworm!” the bat man claimed. “Well, I want to be a teacher so I can beat my students harder than our class teacher does! OK, guys! I’ll show you how I’ll treat my students when I become a teacher!” she said while breaking a thin branch from where she was and then went to the bat man and beat him. “Mingalarpar… Sayarma, I’m scared of you, sayarma!” the bat man shouted and flew to safer branch… …when our new teacher turned to us, I and Nga Pay tried to escape from her lashes and said “Mingalarpar … sayarma, we are sssscared of you, sayarma……”
After playing till we dropped in the tree, we went down to the lowest branch and jumped down to a big heap of paddy husks out of it, and went our respective homes. We had a nice afternoon there!

                Actually, I should have known that it was the last summer I could enjoy with my treasured friends….. If I had known that, I would have made all my buddies happier and happier………
                                                
                                                      (iv)

Before the school reopened, my parents had already planned to move to the city in search for a be better life and to provide me with good education. They finally decided to move … without thinking about how I and my friends would suffer……without having planned not to make us cry …… without knowing that my free, simple and blissful life was sacrificed for city life that they had been dreaming to belong to… and without noticing how city life would be challenging for a small town boy like me, they took me away from my friends……  

The End

        There is a place I often go to in my mind whenever I feel lonely. It has green leafy tamarind tree, a heap of paddy husks onto which the four friends find very exciting to jump out of the tree … and a lake covered with big shady tropical trees and bushes. Moreover, it also has a school where the four students cheerfully studied and a rest house at the entrance of a small town where three young children cried and waved goodbye to the one who unexpectedly left them alone.
             All in all, I often go to a place  which has retained sheer bliss…
the delightful shouts … the tears … and the tender life I used to entirely belong to ……………………

 Note:  Dear, readers! If you are one of my long-lost friends, either Nga Pay, Chit Ko or Su Thinzar Htet, please, feel free to contact the department of English at Mandalay University to meet me again!
                                                                                        
                                    
                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Thank you very much!
Khon Min Set (ခြန္မင္းဆက္)

                                                                     25.Jan.2015 (8:15 pm)