Alice Horton read the final paragraph for the last time, the last of at least ten times she sighed tossing the magazine on the day room table.

Under her breath, she muttered, "Damned if I can understand it." Her utterance was a bit louder than she thought, enough to alert her roommate and friend, Tracy Lord, that there was a minor problem.

"Something bothering you, Al?" Ask Tracy.

Retrieving the magazine Alice rolled it into a cylinder and shook it at Tracy, "Guess I am older than I thought I was, Read, this story three times, the ending ten and I have no more understanding than when I first opened the magazine."

Tracy, standing next to her friend, whispered, "Afraid you're getting senile?"

"Hell! No! Came Alice's quick retort, "I can read and understand as well as I could in my fifties, it is just that these kid writers do not follow structure. It is not like our day when a story had a beginning a middle and an end. For instance, the piece that has me so rattled, it starts at the end, spends some time in the middle, then to the beginning before returning to the end, only not to end but just stop. Nothing solved, resolved or concluded,"

Tracy took her friends hand, "Well what about characters and plot they must tell you something.
"They do; indeed, they do, the tell me that the writer believes that because the story is from their imagination that they are smarter than the reader, that if they give character sketches and plot outlines the reader should get the story even if there is no cohesive story there."

Tracy looked somewhat perplexed and thought long before speaking, "I think I understand but am not positive; could you clarify?"

"Let me put it this way. Suppose I tell you the story of Peter Rabbit, with no mention of Peter Rabbit; instead I speak of farms, farmers and rabbits in general. As a topper I meander to about between the topics till the last paragraph which is Peter and his pals were victorious. Would you wonder what you had just heard. That is what that story did to me."

Tracy giggled, I knew that I just wanted you to explain, I read the story last night, that's when I put the magazine out here, to bumfuzzle someone else, sorry it was you."