Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Rosie. She discovered that when she said funny things, people laughed merrily and felt good. This made Rosie feel good, too.

When she grew up, Rosie became a comedienne. That’s a person who stands in front of an audience and makes the audience laugh. If the audience doesn’t laugh, the comedienne doesn’t eat. But Rosie made her audiences laugh. She ate well and frequently, upon which some of the meaner townspeople of New York and Hollywood commented.

She was so successful at making audiences laugh that one day powerful people approached her. “Rosie,” they said, “we want to hire you to be funny on that magical box, television. Once a day you’ll speak with special visitors, while people around the country watch. We think you could be the goose that lays our golden egg.”

Though Rosie didn’t like to be called a goose, she agreed.

Millions of people turned on their magical boxes to watch Rosie. She was funny, but she was also kind. In fact, she became known as “the Queen of Nice.” Of course, she wasn’t really a queen, just a peasant who, by coincidence, had been born in a place called Queens.

Rosie also became known for telling all her viewers how fond she was of a man named Tom Cruise, who made his living by acting. Rosie appeared to want to marry Tom and live happily ever after.

And yet, at the same time, some people said that Rosie could never be happy with a man like Tom, because Rosie could never be happy with a man. Talk spread throughout the land that Rosie aimed her real affections at damsels.

Rosie never discussed this matter with her loyal viewers. She did discuss the fact that she had taken poor unloved orphans into her home to raise as her own. She adored children, and rejoiced in being a mother.

It was because children moved her so that she decided to tell everyone her secret. She did like damsels – a lot. She and one maiden had been as husband and wife to each other for years. So unhappy was Rosie at the injustice in the kingdom of Florida faced by parents like her – parents such as Rapunzel and Snow White who fell in love, adopted Goldilocks and moved to Tallahassee – that she revealed her secret, hoping the world would see such parents aren’t big bad wolves.

She had already decided it was time to cease her work on the magical box. Rosie also cut her hair in a surprising manner, causing a great hue and cry across the land. And for a time, she became entangled in a dark forest known as legal proceedings.

When the realm of San Francisco allowed women to marry women, Rosie wed her love amidst great fanfare. There was joy in the streets. Sadly, powerful wizards decreed their marriage had never happened.

Rosie returned to the magic box, joining a group of lively town criers who behaved both like loving sisters and wicked step-sisters. Rosie and an ogre with extraordinary hair scarred each other in verbal battle.

It seemed to the people that Rosie engaged in verbal conflict more often than Cinderella swept the hearth. There was wondering across the land at the change in the Queen of Nice. Had telling her secret changed her? Had she not really been nice? Had someone slipped her a poison Golden Delicious?

After just a short time with the town criers, she decided to part ways with them. That brings us to this very day. Where Rosie’s crooked tale goes from here has even the mirror on the wall stumped.