MARK MY WORD: KINDNESS CAN BE AS SIMPLE AS A FAMILY HUG

Kindness is catching.

In Cape Girardeau and the surrounding area, it's become almost an epidemic. The immediate kindness bug can be attributed in some part to this newspaper's Random Acts of Kindness celebration, which is the most organized randomness that I've ever seen.

Since my wife, Joni, is heading up all this kindness at the newspaper, I have a front row seat at Kindness Fest '96.

George Bush talked about a kinder, gentler nation, but somehow I doubt this is what he had in mind.

Personally, I like kindness. As a parent, I want my children to be kind, but I will settle for not whining.

Kids can be kind, but I'm convinced it can be pretty random.

Take cleaning up your room, for example. Our 4-year-old, Rebecca, regularly leaves her clothes, toys, shoes and everything else scattered around the house.

Occasionally, she will announce enthusiastically that she will help clean up. But after picking up one or two items, she will generally pronounce the task completed.

If the city's solid waste department used this same reasoning, most of the trash would still be rotting at the curb, which would clearly not be an act of kindness.

Kindness is relative. Our 5-month-old daughter, Bailey, isn't ready to babble about kindness. But when she sleeps through the night, Joni and I consider it an immense kindness.

Kids can be kind by not having a temper tantrum while mom or dad is talking on the telephone. This is a tough one because it's been my experience that most children will be angels until the phone rings. Then they suddenly go berserk. They scream and carry on like there isn't a tomorrow, which might well be the case when the parents get off the phone.

The telephone syndrome is the main reason why parents don't want to work at home unless they live in the White House. The president and first lady, of course, don't have to answer their phone. They have a staff to do that.

As an act of kindness, I think all parents need a sound-proof room where they could talk on the phone without fear that the person on the other end, generally your mother-in-law, will hear loud screams and wailing from your children.

Parents also need naps. Society has it all wrong. We spend years trying to get our children to take naps when what we really want is to take them ourselves.

Kids don't need naps. It's the parents, who are tired from working at work and at home. They are tired of doing bottles, changing diapers, giving baths, cleaning up the house, doing dishes, doing laundry, paying bills and running to the store.

So businesses should be kind to us this week and let us all take naps on the job.

That way, we'll have plenty of energy left for family hugs.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.