Only on Sanibel Island
To the editor:
Only on Sanibel Island, can a string lead to the greatest mystery of the day!
The sun was out spectacularly and it was about 65 degrees, as I took my usual walk along the seashore. I reveled at the sun shining on the water, glistening brilliantly, as the waves rolled in.
In the distance, I saw a man standing on the sand at the edge of the ocean. He seemed to be doing Tai Chi. He was pulling his arms into himself, first, the right, then the left and then the right and then the left … I was amazed at how consistent he kept on doing this, time and time again!
As I got closer to him, I began to wonder if he was actually exercising. His movements were just too repetitive, doing the same thing over and over.
I finally reached him and just had to ask him. “My friend,” I said. “With all due respect, what is it that you are doing? Is this a new form of spiritual martial arts? Have you discovered the secrets of the universe and are trying to pull them into yourself?”
“Not at all,” he said, looking kind of bewildered and confused. “Do you see the string? I’ve been pulling it for 15 minutes already and it just never ends! I don’t want any turtles, fish, or birds getting caught in it! It seems to be attached to something, but I don’t know what it is!”
I looked closer and sure enough there was a string coming in right from the air around us! He kept pulling on it, over and over again, but there seemed to be nothing attached! It just never ended.
The guy almost shouted out now, getting more and more perturbed: “I have to find out what’s at the end of this string. This is driving me crazy! It”s just going on and on, into infinity!”
By now, a small crowd of people had gathered around him. After hearing the story, everyone kept shouting out ideas. What could possibly be the weight at the end of the string? Was it a connection to the clouds which had been seeded to create some badly needed rain? Was it possible, that it actually led to the sacred, “Stairway To Heaven”?
We all stood there shouting out wild ideas, when 10 minutes later, a new guy jogged by, saw the string being pulled, and calmly declared, “Oh, that’s, where my kite went! I lost it about an hour ago! I was worried about all the wildlife possibly getting caught in the 2,200 feet of string!”
“This is amazingly ironic,” the kite string puller said. “We had absolutely no idea what the string was attached to! All I knew was that I was pulling it and pulling it and it just kept going and going on forever!”
Finally the kite appeared at the end of the string and the crowd started wildly cheering! “The mystery is finally solved!” the kite string puller declared. “This could only happen on Sanibel Island, where mysteries are magically created and then magically solved!”
Lisa Solomon
Long Beach, New York