BAD MANNERS …..good sex and loyalty……

The movie Bad Manners was released1 about six months before I retired from my 30 year career as a classroom teacher and lecturer. I was also bringing my extensive work in Baha’i administration slowly to a close as 1998 turned to 1999. I watched the film last night,2 a dozen years into my life of retirement during which I have reinvented myself as a: writer and author, poet and publisher, researcher and on-line blogger. This short film of 88 minutes sufficiently stirred my mind and emotions for me to write this prose-poem. -Ron Price with thanks to 1 IMDb, 9 October 1998, and 2SCTV, 12:05-2:00 p.m., 31 March 2012.


I’ve always liked Bonnie Bedelia who
worked on Broadway making a debut
supporting Patty Duke in 1962 in Isle
of Children: the year mytravelling and
pioneering life began in thatlittletown
in the GoldenHorseshoe, in Dundas, for
the Canadian Baha’i community. Bonnie
and I are stillgoing. In addition to her real
beauty her role provoked me into thinking
abouta husband’s faithfulness, mine & the
faithfulness of other husbands—and wives.

During my 45 years of marriage: 1967-2012
relationships between men and women—as
well as marriage have changed more than in
the previous 3000.1 Good sex is something
this film does not do but as Martin Amis says:
“good sex is impossible to write about.”2 But
good relationships, this film implies…..require
faithfulness and loyalty: the bond that unites
hearts most perfectly, as writes ‘Abdul-Baha.

1Stephanie Coontz, The Australian, 1 June 2005.
2 Natasha Walter, All Passion Spent, The Guardian, 20 November 2004. Martin Amis(1949- ) is a British novelist, essayist and short-story writer.


Ron Price
31 March 2012