The Cherokee Tribune's Kristal Dixon reported yesterday that Mary Mendez, of Bradshaw Farms, has convinced the City of Woodstock to declare this coming Monday as "Random Acts of Kindness Day." The idea is to get people to do nice things for others. Now this is a dog that will hunt.

Ms. Mendez would like to see the idea spread to other towns. So would I.

In fact, I will get the ball rolling myself. This is going to come as a shock to many of you, but on a rare occasion I can get a reader upset with me. Last week, Reader Bill took umbrage at something I said on these pages and referred to it as a "kerfuffle." He also called me a "has-been" and opined that he didn't give a rat's rump how I earned a living, but said he was still my friend. I didn't recognize it at the time, but Reader Bill was practicing a random act of kindness. Otherwise, he might have told me what he really thinks of me. Thank you, Reader Bill, for being my friend.

I am still trying to figure out what a "kerfuffle" is. My suspicion is that it is a poor cousin to broccoli and The Woman Who Shares My Name is going to pour cheese sauce on it and tell me to eat it because it is good for me. The Woman Who Shares My Name doesn't practice random acts of kindness when it comes to serving food she thinks is good for me.

Since Woodstock is in Cherokee County and the majority leader of the state Senate, Chip Rogers, resides there, maybe Ms. Mendez can convince him to continue concentrating on major issues, like preventing our body parts from being microchipped while we aren't looking and let our new state School Superintendent John Barge restore the sagging morale of our public school teachers. If Rogers is hot-to-trot for school teachers, maybe he and his friends in the General Assembly could let teachers teach without worrying about furloughs, cannibalizing public schools, guns in schools, paper work, red tape and second-guessing. That not only would be a random act of kindness, it would be a frigging miracle.

If random acts of kindness get legs and walk their way into Marietta, don't be surprised to see City Councilman and local land baron Philip Goldstein get caught up in the spirit of things and decide that a five-story structure on the Marietta Square would be uglier than ear wax and instead, build a quaint two-story building where we could buy candy and kerfuffles.

This may be pushing things a bit, but if we can get some kindness infused into Cobb Commissioners before this Tuesday, the poobahs might decide their proposed Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax should cover only county needs and leave the wish list to toddlers negotiating with Santa Claus. As hard as I am pushing random acts of kindness, I can't guarantee that Cobb County citizens are going to be in a benevolent mood next March 15, when they vote on the SPLOST in an election estimated to cost the county between $300,000 and $400,000. I can only do so much.

Speaking of which, how can I promote random acts of kindness if I don't practice what I preach?

Let me start by congratulating my friends at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta on their second-place finish in the recent athletic skirmish in Athens. Well done. By the way, the first-place team, the University of Georgia, the oldest state chartered university in the nation located in Athens, the Classic City of the South, just received word that we have another Rhodes Scholar. That makes 19. That's Ivy League territory, except we play better football than Yale and Harvard combined.

And to former Gov. Roy Barnes and former Rep. Buddy Darden, I say take your vitamins and avoid crowds this winter. You two and former Sen. Sam Nunn may be the last three white moderate Democrats in Georgia still able to sit up and take nourishment. We allowed Passenger Pigeons to become extinct. We don't want to see you guys join them.

I must admit that random acts of kindness make me feel warm and fuzzy all over. But don't get your hopes up. There are some things about which I am not willing to compromise. No way am I eating kerfuffles. Not even with cheese sauce.

You can reach Dick Yarbrough at yarb2400@bellsouth.net or P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139.