Many of us older types, in the back of our cantankerous conscience, harbour an image of the typical kid as a soulless automaton listening to death metal dirges on his iPod while his nimble fingers massacre hundreds in a game of Grand Theft Auto.

The only time he comes up for air is when his cell phone vibrates a text message that his buddies are hooking up at the Galaxy to see the latest sequel in the Saw series.

I was mentally painting this grim canvas one night as I trudged up Broadway at 5 p.m. one day for a photo shoot of these kids, when I could have been packing it up and going home.

Little did I know, at the time, that I was about to run smack dab into an epiphany. Awaiting my arrival were people from an Orangeville District Secondary School club called ARK, which stands for Acts of Random Kindness.

Get a load of this, folks. Their mission is to be nice for the sake of being nice – extolling basic human decency with the idea it will rub off on somebody else; do right by people because, well, it’s the right thing to do.

Those mean little so-and-so’s. Where did they get off forcing a man, who’s been comfortably disgusted with society all these years, to purge his cynical mindset and consider there could still be hope for this amoral world?

“I just want to make the world better,” said Grade 11 student Lindsay French. “I know it sounds cliché, but by just being nice to someone, you can really make their day.”

I got to thinking about my old high school and what would have happened if I walked up to my particular peers and said: “Hi guys. Let’s do nice things today.” After getting over their initial shock, their act of random kindness would be a free shampoo, for me, in the boys’ room toilet.

That would inevitably be followed by banishment from Coolville and exile to the lonely realm of Dorkdom.

Sophia Zamaria was fully aware of such possible consequences when she launched the club in February. “I considered that my reputation could go out the window if I did this,” she recalled, “but if I make something better for someone else, I make this a better place for me.”

Since then, ARK has come up with events such as the Boomerang Project, where they wrote positive messages on notes such as “smile,” “open the door for somebody,” and “pick up some litter.” The whole idea was to do what the note asked and pass it on.

Then, later in the day, someone just might walk up to you, give you a big smile or hold the door open, and pass you a note. Like a boomerang, the good will came back to you.

There was Live Free Day, where participants were sponsored for giving up one of their base luxuries (like Grand Theft Auto) for a day. The proceeds would go to the Breakfast Club for hungry students.

There was also Free Hug Day and that’s self-explanatory.

Most recently, they held a three-day long bake sale, raffled off a gingerbread house, and raised $300; which they spent on toys to fill the stockings at The Door.

As I was told all this, I made a few caustic comments, fixed my eyes downward on my notepad and scribbled away.

Avoid eye contact, I reminded myself. Don’t let them see you getting mistyeyed at the thought of young human beings with the guts to break the adolescent indifference code and reach out to their fellow man.

I exited The Door. I had navigated this humanitarian detour and was back on the familiar road to grumpy old manhood. It’s just youthful idealism on their part, I told myself, pure naivete.

Yet, I noticed subtle differences in my own demeanour. There was a slight spring to my step. I saw the Christmas lights on the Broadway median having more significance than just an obligatory, year-end public works project.

I appreciated a greeting from a stranger on the street, rather than automatically thinking: “Who the hell are you?”

Things, I always surmised, had gone awry over the course of time. The Woodstock generation evolved into the Wood Gundy generation, traded in its hippie vans for Lincoln Navigators, went on a spree of rampant materialism and splashed mindlessly in the shallow depths of metro sexual vanity.

Our only legacy to the next generation was paranoia over global warming, deteriorating socio-economics, genocidal flu epidemics and the horrific discovery by our 24-hour news channels that Tiger Woods is subject to human frailties.

The younger demographic, therefore, would have every excuse to zone out into some virtual reality and never return. Instead, they have responded with a remarkable maturity and a social conscience.

It’s not only the ARK group that is proof of this. There are the students at Westside Secondary who raised almost 10 grand to fight breast cancer, the eightyear olds who take it upon themselves to cut their hair and donate it to make wigs for those who have undergone chemotherapy, and the lemonade stand that raised funds to help the Wymant family during their daughter’s illness in Scotland.

The list goes on and on.

I guess we all need an episode that causes us to pause, take a mental inventory, and realize that this world ain’t such a bad place, after all. For me, it was a recent photo shoot at the Door.

So all I can say to those kids intent on doing Acts of Random Kindness: Thanks. You gave me the best Christmas present I’ve received in a long time.