MUAMMAR GADDAFI AND ME

[RonPrice]

I was just getting back into the teaching profession in the first week of September 1969 when the name Gaddafi was in the news. I was far too busy moving into my flat in Picton Ontario, preparing to teach in the rural community of Cherry Valley, and opening another Baha’i locality in the then Nine Year Plan.¹ I was still recovering from writing-off my car the week before to really take in the bloodless coup d’etat against King Idris.² Gaddafi was 27 in 1969 and I was 25.

I was also still recovering from my own bloodless coup, a mental health disorder in four psychiatric hospitals the year before, a spell of security work driving an armoured truck and several months of unsuccessful employment as a systems analyst with the Bad Boy Company in Toronto Ontario. I was eager to get back into the teaching profession which I had left in June of 1968. This small town in southern Ontario seemed just right. It was about six weeks after the first men had landed on the moon.-Ron Price: references--¹Baha’i Teaching Plan from 1964 to 1973; and ²Wikipedia, 22 February 2011.

Gaddafi was just a name in the news

back then, news which blows at you

from some lighted chirping box or an

unlighted one known as a radio….So

much comes at us all as we go about

our jobs, our marriages, so many acts

in the day-to-day world as we all try

to survive the tempest blowing in our

world with the speed of light before

life ends in that twinkling of an eye.

You’ve been a busy man, Muammar,

since 1969, and so have I these.....

40 years. They called you the new

Che Guevara of the age, and even

the King of Kings of Africa. I wonder

if you and I will make it into old age,

a period in the lifespan which human

development psychologists call those

years after 80. I have a better chance

than you. They tell me there are a total

of 37 spellings of your name, Muammar!¹

The end, your end, it appears, is nigh!

¹ An article published in the London Evening Standard in 2004 lists a total of 37 spellings of his name, and 32 spellings are known at the Library of Congress.

Ron Price

22 February 2011

Updated for: ArtFreaks.com Forums

On: 24/8/'11