by Johnny Bananas

It was a day that will live on in infamy. It has been compared to 9/11, Pearl Harbor, Y2K and even the the Black Friday the year the Cabbage Patch Kids were discontinued. The steps of our hallowed Capital Building covered with the loud boots and even louder mouths of those who had enough listening to Donald Trump conceding defeat and decided to do something about it. 

I hadn’t gone that day to attend the rally. My business in Washington D.C. was less formal. I was returning a tuxedo I had rented for my neighbor’s dog’s wedding. You read that correctly. I was the best man, the only man really, and my Burmese was the bitch of honor. You have never seen two happier Labradoodles in all of your life. Little did I know what lay in store later that day. 

As the events unfolded I was walking across the mall intending to cut through the Capitol on my way to the Lincoln Memorial. It turns out Abe is my great, great, great uncle’s lawyer who almost got him off for stealing rhinestones from some cowboys. They ended up shooting him outside the courthouse before the trial. Apparently Uncle Ernie had tried to park his horse in their spot, which is an offense punishable by death among rhinestone cowboys. 

After a brief one-sided conversation I swung over to the Treasury Department to get some Bitcoins for the long bus ride out to my ride share lot. Unlike my dead uncle I understand the subtleties of public parking. There are a lot of crazy and angry people out there these days, and January 6^th was no exception. 

Luckily, as I made my way up the steps to the Capitol there were some incredibly hospitable Capitol police who opened the barricade and ushered me in with several hundred other tax-paying tourists that day. I was a little concerned, since they all went with me into the Capitol, that we were all going to the same ride share. Most of them were taking pictures and a few of them were taking items from inside the Capitol, which seemed odd given there is a souvenir shop. However, who wouldn’t want an official congressional podium if you could get your hands on one? I couldn’t, but I did get some of Adam Kinzinger’s slightly moistened stationary and a handful of the complimentary breath mints from Jerry Nadler’s office.  

Out of nowhere appeared a towering and tattooed figure wearing what looked like a yarmulke fashioned from a water buffalo. He and several of his friends were singing patriotic tunes as they galloped through the halls. And why wouldn’t they, since they live in a country where the government has police everywhere to protect them on a day like today? Officers lined the hallways taking pictures with their compatriots.

Even the members of Congress had started a game of hide and seek. Though they seem childish when I see them talk on the television, I was learning it’s more of a childlike innocence that leads them to play their political games, for which that day they’d invited thousands. Their generosity, typically reserved for themselves, was extended to the little people. If only we could have found them to say thank you. 

Outside the cheers and chants of “Four more years!” could be heard shaking the windows. American flags waved violently both inside and outside of the portico-vestibule thingy area as if to say “the love America revolution is in the air.” It felt like a BLM riot except without the sounds of windows smashing, buildings burning, organized looting, guns shooting, violent beatings and mobs of angry blue and red haired people who go to the same barber. 

I was hoping to find Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to tell her my neighbor would in fact like to date her, and also the joke I heard about the time former Vice President Biden accidentally went number two at the Vatican. The punch-line is “the Brown New Deal” which is hilarious and I wanted to see if her big beautiful eyes got any bigger when she laughed. I was told by security she had gone a few blocks away to another building, so I would have to try another day. 

Tired from all of the walking and revelry I went back to my hotel to settle in for the night. I could hear the faint sounds of the crowd as they made the long march back from their Constitutionally-protected block party. Sitting on my bed eating a slice of pizza, I turned the channel to the local news network that described the day’s event as an “insurrection” that had “endangered the lives of those who serve in Congress” and I started laughing so hard I began to choke. Since there were no more capitol police there to help me, I ran in a panic at the balcony ledge to slam my diaphragm into it as hard as I could as a sort of auto-Heimlich maneuver (not to be confused with the Otto Von Heimlich maneuver – which NEVER works) and nearly tumbled over the twenty-third story ledge. Luckily I tripped as I approached the railing catching my diaphragm just right and coughed up the offending but perfectly seasoned garlic crust and watched it fall in sheer terror onto some lucky soul below. It was the last bite, for Pete’s sake. 

That’s how I almost died on January 6^th, a day that will live in infamy. 

Johnny Bananas is the nom de plume of a fake news reporter living in Vermont. Nothing he reports ever actually happened. This is satire, folks.