What’s so difficult about smiling at people? Or saying thank you? Or opening a door for a man, woman, child or dog? Letting someone ahead of you in line? Common courtesy is not so common these days.

Ever try to get into multiple-access drive-through line at your local Dunkin’ Donuts? Maybe it’s the withdrawal before the caffeine and sugar fix that has drivers mean and motivated to maintain their prized position in queue for the speaker.

How about the hostility in your favorite supermarket checkout lanes? You know who you are. Rolling that cart from line 13 to line 8 with no regard to toes, shins or the poor old soul who’s headed in that direction at the legal speed limit.

Life is tough for everyone these days.

And yes, we are all in a hurry to get, do, be, buy, pick up or drop off someone somewhere at sometime.

But think about this:

How do you feel when a stranger walks by you and says, “I really love those shoes”? Think about the delight you felt when the driver of that tank of a Hummer waived you ahead in the 7 a.m. coffee line. It changes your attitude for the next 15 minutes.

We used to say, “What goes around, comes around.” Some of us even talked about creating good and bad karma.

Well, whatever.

I’m on a one-woman campaign to spread some common courtesy this month.

Want to join me? See if we can bank some good karma? Pay for past sins. Invest in a brighter tomorrow or just make today the embodiment of that all-American cliché – a good one – for someone you don’t know and will probably never see again? Watch what happens when you do a nice thing, and share the reaction with all of us in the ZONE. Or let us know how a random act of civility made your day.

Write to us at womynzone@ledger.com.

Who knows. This acting like decent, caring, courteous human beings might just catch on.