WASHINGTON—A bipartisan deal was struck at the eleventh hour on Tuesday, heading off a showdown over the use of bedtime filibusters in the Santori household. Historically, the upstairs bedchamber of young Mitch Santori, six, has been regarded as a sanctum of quiet, acting as a cooling saucer of milk to facilitate the important business of slumber. Recently, however, the minor’s recurring tantrums, once reserved for extraordinary circumstances like not getting sugared cereal for breakfast, has all but ground to a halt the customary bedtime rituals. Regularly failing to gather a supermajority to end debate and progress to a final goodnight kiss, Mr. and Mrs. Santori have grown increasingly frustrated, threatening to trigger the so-called “nuclear option” that effectively would allow the first-time parents to confirm the nomination of their chosen bedtime story with a simple majority vote.
Fearing that the parliamentary maneuver would forever harm familial decorum and the rights of the minority party enshrined by his forefathers, Mitch put down his pajama-clad foot. Calling it a “sad day for the Santori household,” Mitch suggested that if the rule change came to pass, “our friends, Mommy and Daddy, are going to be remembered as the worst leaders here ever…times infinity.” The ensuing exchanges, peppered with insincere gestures of cordiality, such as the references to their respective “good friends from across the hall,” alongside whispered charges of “poopy-headedness,” barely hewed to the longstanding house rule that “no family member in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another relative any conduct or motive unworthy or becoming a relative lest they be censured with a timeout.”
Staring over the precipice from the top bunk, an unlikely gang of stuffed animals led by a raggedy hawk nicknamed McNasty, worked under-the-covers through bath time to avert the looming crisis. In the end, the heads of household agreed to withdraw two chore-related requests in exchange for allowing at least seven bedtimes to pass without undue disruption. According to neighbors who overheard the debate, Mr. and Mrs. Santori were quoted as saying, “This is the last time we let Mitch watch C-SPAN before bed!” At press time, McNasty confirmed that the harried parents were reading to Mitch from Adam Mansbach’s best-selling children’s book, “Go the F*#k to sleep.”
