BY PETER BRONSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
LITTLE GASPARILLA ISLAND -- If this isn't heaven, I'm pretty sure I can see it from here -- it's right across the channel on Boca Grande, one of the lushest islands of wealth in Florida, where old money stays in second or third homes, not rented condos, and floats on yachts, not boogie boards.
Hmmm. I guess I'm farther from heaven than I thought. But it only took me a day on the island to walk on water.
There I was, wading out into the surf when something large, tan and wavy undulated toward me like a family-size flapjack with eyes and a long, pointed tail, and quicker than I could yell "stingray!" -- I walked on water back to the beach.
Well, actually, I didn't really walk across the water. That would be a miracle. The truth is I ran across the water.
What the heck, I needed another layer of sun-blocker anyway, so I would not turn vermilion and be mistaken for one of the Ohio manatees that litter Florida's beaches.
Ohio manatees are not the same as Florida manatees, which are so endangered they are only seen on license plates (which is just as well because they apparently resemble something squeezed out of a giant tube of ugly). Ohio manatees are not endangered. They're as common as Coppertone and smell like it, too. They're crimson on top, and golf-ball white on the sandy side. Only the shape is the same.
And just as stingrays migrate to Little Gasparilla Island, followed by hungry hammerhead sharks (why didn't anyone tell me this before I went into the water?), Ohio manatees migrate south each spring, followed by Michigan sand slugs, Wisconsin albino whales and other sun-seeking mammals from the Midwest.
The reason: Nothing cures a case of the winter gray-blues like a few hundred megawatts of full-strength Florida solar radiation. Even the EPA has not figured out how to regulate it yet. It's relatively free and temporarily legal -- at least until the U.S. Surgeon General finds a way to stick a warning label on the surface of the sun.
And until President Al Gore outlaws automobiles, any ordinary American can change the weather. Just tie folding chairs and beach umbrellas to the top of a minivan, point it south on I-75 for about 1,000 miles, give or take a few states, adjust the speedometer to about 70, and you have instant summer in 16 hours.
My advice: Aim for an island. The smaller the better. The one I was on was so small it had only three forms of transportation: walk, swim, or take a ferry back to the real world. I chose "none of the above," until I discovered that walking on waves did not qualify me to turn water into wine, and I was cast out of Eden to find a grocery store.
But that's the best part of island life: being surrounded by isolation.
There are people in the newspaper business who say they just can't resist picking up a newspaper on vacation. Not me. I can resist it without even lifting a finger. I can avoid watching TV with my eyes closed.
Accountants don't drive all the way to Florida adding up the numbers on license plates. Morticians don't measure every body on the beach. Lawyers don't issue restraining orders to their kids in the back seat. Plastic surgeons don't pick fights so they can rearrange someone's face.
So why should I care about the news? Millions of people go through their entire lives without a clue about what's going on. Why couldn't I survive a week?
I not only survived -- I enjoyed it. No Monica, Paula, Carville or Clinton. No Newt, Arafat, Boris or playground snipers. The worst news I heard all week was, "It's time to go home."
And look what I missed: nearly nothing.
There was a plan to fix Social Security. A debate on race. Bickering about the riverfront. Big businesses got bigger. Chances of a tobacco settlement got smaller. Fighting erupted in the Mideast and peace broke out in Ireland -- or was it the other way around? Taxes went up. Test scores went down. Ken Starr kept digging and Bill Clinton kept winking and shrugging.
When I came up for air -- slowly, so I wouldn't get the news "bends" -- I couldn't tell if I had lost a week or gained a life.
According to the Editorial Writer's Code, I'm supposed to issue the mandatory warning: What you don't know can hurt you, like stepping on some poisonous sea creature.
But I miss news-free paradise, where relaxing is as easy as surf on a sun-splashed beach; where headlines are treated like stingrays: "Leave them alone and they won't bother you."
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
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