Insights into string theory

I was reading "The Strangest Force" article in my June 13-19, 2009 issue of New Scientist magazine today when I had what I think may have been an insight. Nothing new to anyone who knows anything at all about physics, and woefully incomplete but in insight none the less. I was thinking about string theory and how it is apparently the most promising for explaining gravity on a quantum level? Maybe thats wrong but I digress. I've never understood the concept of having dimensions so small or "rolled up" that they can't be seen but that somehow can account for and explain other things in nature. Then I remembered the book "Flatland" and "Sphereland." So lets say there is a universe with inhabitants that exist on a single line. These creatures only know the ability to move along this line in one dimension. Its not a string. Its an extruded, zero dimensional point. A true mathimatical line (at least the inhabitants think so.) So now lets imagine that these inhabitants have come up with some theory that explains some fact of nature. It doesn't matter what the theory is or what it explains, just that it works 80% of the time for 80% of things observed. But lets also say that this theory says that atoms should vibrate at a frequency of 2 occilations per second. To us that means that an atom should move along the line forward, then backward, forward then backward in one second. Remember that the theory works for everything else but not this observed phenomenon. The only problem is that, when observed, atoms only vibrate at one occilation per second! Whats happening to the other predicted occiation? Lets now say that one of these line creatures comes up with this theory. That the universe is actually 2 dimensional. But that one of the dimensions is so small that its impossible to ever observe directly. The truth is, the universe is actually a rectangle, but you can only see this other dimension if you "zoom" way way way WAY into the "line" that is the universe. When you get down to that level, its obvious that the universe is actaully more like a ribbon. Furthermore, it is now obvious that atoms, which previosuly had been observed to only vibrate at one occilation per second, are actaully, as the theory states, vibrating at two occilations per second. Forward, backward, left then right in all 2 dimensions. You could extend this thought experiment so that the now 2 dimensional world is 3 like ours (but in the case of our experimental world, it would be like a spaghetti noodle), or 4, or 6 or 10! I think I have at least some small sliver of an idea of what string theory has to offer as a tool to explain nature even if it is unobservable, at least directly.